I...I DON'T KNOW. I JUST DON'T KNOW.

I just wrote an entire post about a brownie. A brownie that I artfully swiped from Noah's kiddie combo meal lunch, a brownie that he did not even know existed, and that I just ate in three bites within 30 seconds of putting him down for a nap.

And then it occurred to me that really, that one sentence right there? Was STILL more words than one should really write about a brownie, no matter how sad one is that the brownie is now gone and there are no more brownies. So I deleted the first post about the brownie, only to then write this post about the brownie.

I'm really good at this blogging thing, sometimes.

Also, I have now have brownie crumbs in my cleavage, and I appear to have spilled salsa on my belly in three different places.

And...

Um...

My cat is real pretty?

One time this happened?

And then one time Noah and I found a ladybug in the house and Noah really, really loved that ladybug and then I said it was time to send the ladybug home and I opened the window to put the ladybug out on the sill but then accidentally dropped the ladybug out the window and Noah looked at me like this because OMFG YOU KILLED DAT LADYBUG?

Yeah. So that's why a brownie seemed like a pretty interesting topic at the time.

(Dear Noah, I'm so, so sorry about the ladybug. I'm sure it's okay, unless I accidentally broke all its legs when I dropped it upside down first and then flipped it off the windowsill while attempting to help it, but you know I used to pick up caterpillars on our walks and let them climb around on my hands and arms for your amusement? I think that should buy me a little forgiveness here.)

(Also, remember that FInding Nemo taught us that toilets lead to the ocean.)

(Spiders freaking LOVE the ocean! It's true!)

34 Weeks

Yes, yes, I know, I know. I'm getting dangerously close to the point where I simply cannot go a day without at least posting that yes, there is no baby yet and all is well with my womb. I'm sorry. It's just that the baby's sock drawer is not going to repeatedly arrange and rearrange itself, y'all.

I've also been blowing my writerly load via dozens of long emails to my husband, since we've learned that we are only allowed to argue about politics via electronic methods. Otherwise we get a tad...shrill with each other, as during major election years our usually happy existence as independents ends, and we retreat to our separate party corners and hiss and spit and furiously send each other links that SO TOTALLY prove that the other person is a complete fucking idiot.

And while I usually just end up defaulting to the surefire "I am never sleeping with you again unless you pull your head at least PARTWAY out of your ass," I'm thinking that's not going to be particularly effective this time.

I mean, check OUT this slammin' physique. Wouldn't YOU be okay with letting the Bush tax cuts expire as planned in 2010 for a chance at that ass?

That's what I thought, suckahs. (And that IS a maternity tank. Those extra four inches of visible fishbelly are so fierce.)

If current "plans" hold -- and oh, I do so love using the word "plans" in regard to ANYTHING birth-related, since it makes me think of "birth plans" and how all the pregnancy books list that as something one should pack for the hospital ("darling, can you please fetch me my chapstick, Yanni CD and seven-page birth plan from the suitcase? It's in the front pocket. No, that's the back-up copy, I mean the one I had laminated.") --  I'll be having this baby in about five weeks.

And...we feel ready, more or less. Oh sure, we still haven't gotten all the various baby gear down from the attic yet and I'm still only assuming that the car seat is where I think I left it, and a full inventory of Noah's infant hand-me-downs reveals a horrifying shortage of 3-6 month sized feetie jammies but...eh. We're ready. We've been gripped with crazy baby fever over the past few weeks, which is convenient! What timing!

Whenever we see someone out and about with an infant, our conversations go something like this:

NOM, I say. SMUSHY BABY THERE MMMM.

GOOD, Jason says, SQUAWKY NEWBORN CHOMP.

Then we nod and go back to gnawing on bones and bitching about Geico ads. (And short- vs. long-term solutions to the energy crisis and Iraq timetables and OH MY GOD SARAH PALIN.)

I'm not sure when it happened -- the 3D ultrasound, the crazy visible kicks and rolls and undulations of mah belleh, the discovery of baby socks that look like shoes, the temporary threat that things might in fact NOT be as perfect and surefire as we thought? I don't know. But here we are, at 34 weeks, and we are finally able to have a conversation about The Baby that doesn't involve a heaping hot dose of TERROR and WHAT HAVE WE DONE? Undo! Ctrl-Z!

My only frustration is that we don't have a name. (Jason changed his mind. Don't even get me started. He changed his mind but has not offered a single usable alternative and WOW, YOU MIGHT EVEN SAY HE FLIP-FLOPPED, MUCH LIKE A CERTAIN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.) (Okay, I'll stop now.) Jason wants to name the baby after he's here, in the hospital. Which is fine, except that I secretly continue to use "the name" in my head and I seriously doubt I'll be able to think of him as anything else, but I have decided to exert my energy elsewhere. The aforementioned sock drawer. The search for the perfect coming-home outfit, which is driving Jason crazy because I think I have rejected every pair of blue feetie jammies in the tri-state area as being either 1) Not special enough, 2) Too frou-frou, 3) Not boyish enough, 4) Too boyish, oh my God, my newborn is not coming home clad in MONSTER TRUCKS, and 5) I dunno, I just don't think raccoons are the statement I'd like to make on the birth announcements. Don't you have something in a teddy bear motif?

And...Jesus, I should stop before I make our household sound ANY MORE INSANE.

Quick! Look! Pet photos!

Way to keep it classy there, everybody.

Metadog

My god, this blog. It is astoundingly boring.

So. Very. Very. Boring.

It is not updated often enough for my discriminating tastes, either.

And this kid is much too old to be very interesting.

Not that all this pregnancy puking and hot dog binge talk is all that appetizing.

In sum, I am in ur charming family portrait, expressing mah disdain. Pfft.

Love,
OG Homie aka Ceiba!

Jesus Wants You To Get Out Of My Flipping Sunbeam

Or, Turf Wars Among the Small Ones
Or, Geez, Amy, Maybe You Should Turn Up the Heat?

I SENSES WEAKNESS.

You think I care, dogthing? I HAS A TENT.

SHADOW DOG IS SHADOWY.

YET...OMFG IS THAT KIBBLE?

Mwa ha ha.

Mine. All mine.

There was a brief stand-off...and then...

Blue Steel FTW! aka I Will Fuck You Up And Good, Dogthing.

*sniff*

(Okay, so this was terribly non-dramatic in the retelling, and not nearly as amusing as actually watching the every-changing-custody of the sunbeam, and wow, I'm actually now kind of ashamed that this is the sort of thing that I regularly depend on to kill a good 45 minutes of the day, so I'm just gonna go ahead and post some pictures of my kid.)

Yes, I know he needs a haircut, but obviously we are just WAY TOO BUSY.

Like Tears of a Clown: The Fat Rolls of a Pursedog

Since her last public appearance on this blog, Ceiba has porked up a little. A tad. A few pounds and ounces. A mere 25% of her body weight. Or so.

Where mah spangly bra and hotpants be at, bitches?

The scientific community is baffled, as her kibble -- her healthy, low-fat, high-protein, crazy-expensive for the preshus-shookie-ookie-kums kibble -- remains largely untouched. And yet there's something about the neck rolls and rotund torso that suggest WAFFLES. LOTS AND LOTS OF WAFFLES.

I can has chili cheez fries?

OMFG SMALL ONE HAS COOKIE COOKIE COOKIE

Eh. Fuckkit. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Max is also overweight, but that's nothing new. He's been overeating to fill a nutsack-shaped void for YEARS now.

I eat kibble while Lard Dog sleep. Is win-win.

 

Paranoid Android

JASON: So. Anything interesting happen today?

AMY: I spent the whole day dealing with shit.

JASON: Ooh, was there some kind of Internet drama?

AMY: No. Like actual, physical shit. I spent the whole day dealing with feces.

JASON. Ooh, Noah?

AMY: Well, yes. Noah kept saying he had to go apoopoo but wouldn't go on the potty and he wanted to watch the Potty Time With Elmo video 14 dozen times and then Max pooped in the office twice and Ceiba crapped on the stairs.

JASON: Uh.

AMY: Yeah. It was an enriching day. I do good work.

***

I've been in a bit of a cranky funk this week and feeling immensely sorry for myself for no reason at all.

Well, okay, unless you count this as a valid reason for funkitude:

Of course, after cursing the coffee maker out for RISING AGAINST ME, FOR MAKING EVERYTHING WORSE, I realized I'd forgotten to put the inner plastic basket thing in before the filter and thus this was all my own fault but COME ON, I was still totally ready to cry about it.

Or, you know, grab a straw and suck that shit up off the countertop.

Same thing with all the pet poop. Max, in a fit of old age and/or belated moving-related rebellion, has decided he will not use his litter box if it is not P-E-R-F-E-C-T-L-Y clean. Which means I must scoop it out after he goes EVERY TIME and sift it and add fresh litter EVERY TIME, or else he relieves himself six inches to the right of the box. As I am extremely lazy and forgetful and also trying to prove a point that he's being ridiculous, just CRAP IN THE BOX ALREADY, he's been having a lot of accidents.

So I clean it all up and always manage to spill litter on the floor, and then I grab the mini-handvac thing and of course, it's never fully charged because I am extremely lazy and never remember to charge it, but at the time I am all, WOE IS ME and *SHAKES FIST AT THE HEAVENS* and that's when I punch myself in the face because dude, it's some kitty litter on the carpet, get a damn grip and call the vet already.

(Seriously. Can you believe this is the most interesting story I've managed to come up with all week?)

(Does your brain itch as it atrophies? Or is it more of a stinging-type sensation?)

Several months ago I blamed a similar funk on the weather. Which is completely gorgeous right now. Except maybe it's a little too hot, plus there are mosquitoes, and I get a sinus headache from all the fucking grass and nature and shit.

Basically, hi. I'm a whiny little bitch who is never happy. Also probably on the rag.

But look! Here's some baby beefcake.

(Hey. Anybody want to join my little ray-of-sunshine ass for a Top Chef open thread tonight at the Mamapop forums? It'll be just like you're sitting in my living room, except you don't have to put up with me asking for foot rubs. Also sometimes I get a little gassy after dinner, so yeah. Forums are totally the way to watch TV with me.)

(Also, of COURSE it was reaction number 3. What kind of mature human being do you people take me for?)

Where iz ur cat be at?

 Several readers have expressed concerns re: Max's whereabouts.

Poor Max. He is fine. And to prove his fineness, we had a little photo session in our bathroom this morning, because that's exactly the sort of classy operation we run here.

He's a liar. Also smooshable and purry.

He's finally at a healthy weight, and it only took eight years of dieting. And a little help from Ceiba, who figured out that Max likes to take two or three bites of food, go poop, then return and eat the rest of his meal. EVERY TIME.

And no matter how many times he returns from the litter box to an empty bowl, he will not alter his poop schedule in the slightest. Then he eats Ceiba's food instead. I vaguely remember a time when I used to give a shit, but at this point it's hard to even care whether it's Noah or Ceiba who actually eats Noah's waffle, and seriously at this point I am ready to throw all of their food into a big trough every morning and let them duke it out.

Puppy made it through the move intact, and I still hear Max singing to it every morning. MRRREOW, REEEOWWW, EEERRROW.

It's not great, cat, but he does his thing and gets points for his beautiful spirit and soul.

Yes. You can has headscritch. But you cannot has cheezburger.

(By the way, does anybody else think that site should be required reading for anybody who is all gung-ho about Web 2.0 and user-generated content, because BEHOLD WHAT THE USERS GENERATE! LOLCAT ARMY! God, I love it.)

Pussy (Cat)

We got back from Aruba on Saturday night. It's been a blur ever since. I still have not uploaded any photos, nor can I find my good hairbrush.

I slept for many, many hours Saturday night, Sunday morning and straight on into Sunday afternoon, when it was time to pick up the pets from the Yuppie Pet Palace Hotel That Ended Up Costing As Much As Our Plane Tickets, Even Though We Supplied All Our Own Damn Food.

Ceiba was...confused, as usual, like she sort of remembered who we were and that occasionally we fed her turkey bacon and oh! look! floor lint!

She's a bit constipated and is having periodic yet dainty sneezing fits, but otherwise is doing just fine.

Max surprised us by not being a royal bitch about everything. He's never been boarded before...usually our neighbors would just come over and feed him but they moved away and our new neighbor is absolutely terrified of Ceiba so I'm not even going to introduce her to our 15-pound Gigundocat. Anyway, every time we come home from vacation he gets a prissy funk about it and ignores us for days.

I don't think Max enjoyed the Yuppie Pet Palace Experience, despite residing in a luxury four-level kitty condo with fresh lambswool bedding (changed daily) and the fact that I provided food from home AND suffered the embarrassment of presenting "Puppy" to the kennel staff, which they all totally laughed at, because Puppy is, without a doubt, the most pathetic-looking stuffed toy you have ever seen in your life.

(Puppy once resembled a knock-off of the Taco Bell chihuahua, back when he had eyes and a nose and the ever-loving shit hadn't been kicked out of him on a daily basis. He has also been re-stuffed and re-sewn about a dozen times, and each time I ended up using whatever extra thread had come with my most-recent clothing purchase, which means Puppy has several oddly-colored seams that resemble gangrenous wounds.)

Max was very, very glad to see us. Max was glad to see CEIBA, and even curled up with her on my newly-diminished lap during the car ride home. But every once in awhile he'd stand up on his hind legs, put his front paws on my chest and stare frantically into my face, like, "IS IT REALLY YOU? CAN IT BE TRUE? OH, DAY OF GLORIOUS JOY!"

And he's been all cuddly and loving and clingy ever since. I'm thinking we need to dump his ass in the kennel more often. Perhaps we can board the baby at Yuppie Pet Palace Hotel too, since I'm still no closer to finding a damn daycare center than I was a few weeks ago.

Hell, they give them fresh lambswool bedding every day, how bad could it be?

The Post-Christmas Pre-Birthday Drunkening

Merry Day After.

I can't give details on our Christmas Day right now, mostly because I'm a littloe bit drnuk. But tomorrow is my birthday! Like, in an hour! Happy birthday meeeeee. I will be 27. Which means I am still young and youthful, so suck it, older people. And younger people? Well, I probably make more money than you, so you can suck it too.

(druuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnnke.)

OKay, enough typing about me rationalizing my birthday as being not that old even though, ogh my God, I am so in my late 20s and not totally world-famous yet, which blows.

HERE ARE (wHOOPs) some Christmas-y-ish photos to fill up some space. I am going to get more wine now. Or maybe some like, extra dry sherry, because I'm FUCKING OLD.

Amy's Mom + Craftiness - Real and Actual Grandchildren = Stockings For Pets

Cat + Catnip + Wee Stocking = We could help him get his head unstuck, but we'd rather just laugh and take pictures.

Christmas Tree + Wine + Tripod = The last time I'll do this damn mathematical-type photo caption, I promise

I got a My Little Pony for Christmas. Did you? I was going to keep it in the box for display purposes, but was overcome with desire to comb its hair within five minutes.

(I got lots more than this, though. Like Coach bags! Many things Coach! And Tiffany's! Because I am loved and spoiled.)

Good God, I fucking hate you. So very, very much.

I would hate you, but I'm too stupid to grasp the concept. Instead? I will just poop on the upstairs carpet.

 

Ceiba: I will save you!

Max: Hey HamsterDog, I hate this hat, but I hate you more, so fuck the fuck off, mm'kay?

Christmas is hard work. And I totally cashed Max's bag of catnip. Sweeet.

(I started this post at 11 p.m. on December 26th. It is now 12:38 a.m. on December 27th. So Happy Birthday to me, and also, photo essays are hell damn time consuming. Am too old to be wasting my life like this.)

There Are Pet Photos at the End, Promise

SMALL TRAGEDY OF THE DAY #1: My hosiery had an unfortunate encounter with my car door, so I had to take them off. I'm wearing knee-high boots, but you can still see my knees, which is asbsolutely SCANDALOUS at my office. Bare knees! With no nude nylons to preserve my modesty! Can pasties and g-strings be far behind?

This tragedy is further tragidized, however, because I did not shave my legs. Thank the lord for blond hair and all, but eesh. I feel yicky.

SMALL TRAGEDY OF THE DAY #2: Red pen. Explosion. Carnage. Permanently stained skin. Bah.

And now, a bonus Wednesday(ish) Advice Smackdown question, as it is of the utmost urgency:

Dearest Q to the E-

Tonight I am making Jell-O shots for a bachelorette party this weekend.  While they may be an immature and trashy shot, they are liked by many participants on the bachelorette bus.  My question is, how do I make these and still make them tasty and not taste like you just drank a liter of vodka?

Your follower-
Tonya

An impromptu Recipedown! Awesome!

Okay, Jello shooters are easy peasy. One small package of Jello (I prefer lime), one cup boiling water and one cup vodka. Mix the Jello and the water, stir, add vodka, stir again, pour into wee souffle cups and chill. Or freeze.

The seekrit is DO NOT USE SHITTY ASS VODKA. This strips the shooters of all camp value and demotes them right down to trailer trash nastiness and visions of frat boys passing around the Mad Dog 20/20. So buy nothing that comes in a big plastic jug with the name of your local liquor store on it in a medieval-looking font.

You buy Grey Goose. Or Belvedere. Expensive, but for real, the rest of your party essentials are freaking gelatin and paper cups. You can splurge here. Also, put the vodka in the freezer for a few hours BEFORE making the shots. Vodka kept anywhere other than the freezer is Vodka Cruelty and I believe we can end this horror in our lifetimes. We just need to work together.

Next weeK? A Very Special Thanksgiving Recipedown, as I show you how to make the World's Very Best Thanksgiving Everything, or at least how to make your husband do it.

And for now? Some random photos from my camera because I can't think of anything else to write about, and oh my God, did I honestly start off this entry by talking about LEG HAIR?

Jesus. This entry was doomed from the start. Gimme a Diarist award! Send money and book deals! I am the next Bridget Jones! Only skinnier! And hairer!

Only Max is aware that the evil Vacuum Cleaner lurks behind them, creeping ever closer, waiting for the perfect chance to devour them all. Your only hope is to blend into the couch.

Jason: The fear is his eyes amuses me. Mwa ha ha.

Ceiba: I wonder if I left the iron on.

(Well, yeah. She's pretty in sepia. Shut up.)

Ceiba: *dreams of shoes, maple syrup and becoming the Ultimate Fighting Champion*

Ceiba: Look! I'm a mummy! Look! Kitty! Look at me!

Max: *will not look*

Amy: *will kill camera operator*

Care Bear PJs: *are adorable*

Amy: HA! Let's put my "I Voted" sticker on the dog's butt. I bet that has NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE.

Jason: Yeah! And let's put my Livestrong bracelet around her neck, because we are SO FUCKING TRENDY.

Ceiba: *chomp*