My Kids Are Amazing

No, really, they are. They were so nice to me yesterday that I don't know how to behave. I guess I should stop beating & duct taping them to chairs. (for the record & the humor impaired, I have never even hit my children. Well maybe once. And I did run over M's toes that time on a road trip but it was a complete accident brought on by nicotine withdrawal and I wish they would stop bringing it up. Besides his toes were fine and if his sister hadn't screamed he might not even have known that they were being run over.)

My children, as we know, were not here on my birthday or mother's day, since they were away at college and boarding school, respectively. So they celebrated it with me yesterday, by going to 4 of my favorite restaurants, ordering something from each one, and bringing it all home and spreading it out on the table. It was marvelous and it even all tasted good together, which is kind of strange since you wouldn't ordinarily order tandoori, tofu & veg with peanut sauce, godzilla roll and crab cakes on one plate.

Then there were presents. M gave me the large google eyed frog garden ornament which I had been eyeing and dropping heavy hints about from Bi-Lo and A spent all her money and bought me a most wonderful chiminea. Now I have to have a real party outside so everyone can admire my lovely garden decor and we can sit around the chiminea drinking heavily and being all trendalicious like a photo shoot for Bon Appetit.

My kids are wonderful. I don't deserve this but I am really proud of them and glad they have turned out so well, against all odds I guess, given their insane mother. Also, I love my frog and chiminea. And Godzilla Roll!

Well Enough To Be Obnoxious

M is getting better. It's been a long road, but he's definitely getting better. Now, he's bored, cranky and obnoxious. Thank the gods. I've never enjoyed being snapped at peevishly so much before. We're ramping down from the pain killers, bit by bit, and soon (not a fucking minute too) this week of hell will be a memory. He said, "Mom - I wish you were more organized." Damn.

A is home. She has graduated from college and returned home, full of. . a shining fervor to make the world a better place? Well, kind of. She's talking about getting a job with a pension plan and health insurance. Switched at birth? Go figure. I keep telling her to join the Peace Corps or get a job on a cruise ship or backpack around Europe - she wants health insurance. I'm really proud of her. Kind of flabbergasted, but proud. Mostly, though, true to her self, she's sleeping and watching movies. She has washed the dishes like 3 times - I think the pod people probably got her at college.

So my empty nest thing is over. A arrived home with boxes and boxes of stuff; I took M up to Celo to get his things yesterday. They both set off immediately to transform their rooms. M took down his dragon posters and his Lord of the Rings poster, threw out his dragon kite (I rescued it and am flying it from the flagpole in front of the house) and announced that all the bookshelves in his room had to go. "Mom" he said, "I'm never going to read these books and I'm 13 years old." So I have to find another home for all 12 volumes of the Wizard of Oz and Road Building in Pictures. Damn. M wants a mini fridge in his room; A's microwave is sitting in hers, and suddenly we have 5 televisions. I think I liked it better when they decorated in spilled cereal and stuffed animals.

This is rough.

M is having a lot of trouble. He woke up this morning in terrible pain, so I gave him 2 Lortabs. That finally worked, but then it made him sick to his stomach, and he threw up. I've spoken to the nurse at the surgeon's office twice now; she's phoned in a prescription for Phenergan suppositories (I heartily approve of phenergan; it's the best drug on the planet & will even make your really bad hangover go away, not that I would ever endorse using any drug for any such lighthearted purpose) but now he's asleep and I don't want to leave him, so I'm waiting for my mom to come over before I can go get it.

The nurse says, this is normal. The nurse says, there will be a lot of pain. The nurse says, it will take a week for the swelling to go down. I'm slowly coming to the realization that this was major, major surgery and it is going to take a long time for him to recover. A really long time. I'm so used to this kid bouncing back from anything in about 12 hours that it seems worse, I think. This is the kid who tore off his whole fingernail skateboarding and was fine after a couple stitches, back on his board 4 hours later. This is the kid who broke his arm 3 times and barely complained. This is the kid who routinely comes home bloody & scraped & completely unfazed. This is the kid who pretty much never gets sick, never throws up, never runs a fever - and having him weak and almost crying and on the couch is more than I can take.

So I asked Metafilter about it, and they have been very helpful, but still, oh gods, this is rough. I feel helpless; I wish I could just take the pain myself and leave him free, I hate seeing him like this, and there's nothing more that I can do other than what I am doing, but what I am doing - sitting on the computer, delivering saltines and coke, rubbing his feet, setting up a fan, running back & forth to the video store - doesn't seem like enough at all.

Also, you know I'm desperate when I actually invite my mom over. I love her to death and all but she freaks out about how disgustingly messy my house is (it really isn't that bad, just cluttered & you can't eat off every surface in my house the way you can in hers but christ on a crutch, I don't have the time, energy or desire to bleach my baseboards once a week) and that always bums me out, since she will then call me like 12 times over the next few days to tell me how horribly I live. This I do not, at this moment, need.

It's times like these I wish someone would hurry up & invent a suspended animation tank. I wish we could just check out for a few days and let time heal his arm with no pain & no misery & then we could wake up in a week or so & it would all be better. No grocery & drugstore bills for a week would be helpful too.

Small Angry Rant

I would just like to note, for the record, that M's father did not attempt to contact him at all, in any way, during this whole ordeal. We found out that he needed surgery last Wednesday; I made M call his other grandmother to tell her and to get her to tell his dad (we have no way to contact him.) I know he did it because I listened in. So he knew, or at least she knew, but do you think there has been a phone call or a fucking get well card or any fucking thing at all to tell this child who just went through a major operation that his father, his fucking biological father or his insane grandmother who's always going on about how I don't let her precious grandson visit cared or were thinking about him in any way?

NO THERE WAS FUCKING NOT AND I AM PISSED.

Even though this is SO FUCKING TYPICAL. ASSHOLE. WHAT AN ASSHOLE.

Hospital Hangover

Yesterday, M had surgery and the doctor put a plate in his radius, held in with 7 screws. Surgery which looked almost exactly, in fact, like this. Which I found on Monday and which helped, I hope, get M through the whole thing.

Surgery is rough. I have never had it - I had two kids natural childbirth, in and out of the hospital - and until yesterday I had no familiarity with any of this pre-op, recovery, post-op, IVs, & etc type stuff. I wish I still didn't. Part of me is wildly second guessing the whole thing, but it's too late now. Poor M is still in a lot of pain, still groggy - it's been more than 24 hours and he's still feeling really rough.

I was going to blog the whole thing, minute by minute, from the tropical fish in the waiting room, to the scariness of the recovery room, to the wearisome waiting, waiting, waiting, to the white bread and american processed pasteurized cheese food of the cafeteria but I don't think I have the energy. It was an ordeal in the truest sense of the word. I was naive going in; I got my ideas from TV; I thought M would wake up from anesthesia and we would joke and share a pizza and I would go home, leaving him briefly in the loving, attentive care of kind and beautiful nurses. It took him hours to wake up and when he did he was in terrible pain and very sick and I was horrified. The nurses were kind but distant and overworked; I held his head when he threw up at 3 am; I followed him in and out of the bathroom with the IV. I "slept" all night on a cranky "reclining" chair that kept trying to swallow me; it was cold and the pillow was slippery plastic underneath its cotton case. All the sheets were stamped Industrial Laundry in big blue letters and small lights flickered, things beeped, and when you called the nurse it took her 10 minutes or more to come.

I thought a lot about how lucky I am to have reached age 42 with two kids and no familiarity with hospital routines; I thought about what it must be like to bring a child into the hospital again and again, to stay there for days, to shiver every day at 4 am under the thin cotton blanket on the vinyl chair. I need to stop bitching - things are not so bad in my life.

It's going to be a long slow road for M to recovery - the doctor doesn't think he should go to camp; he'll be 3 weeks with this splint & huge foam sling, then into a cast, but he will have to be careful all the time. His hand is all swollen and he feels like hell. It's awful and they gave me hydrocodone to give him, which scares me, but his pain is worse. And me? I feel like I have a hangover, even though I haven't had a drop to drink. God what a loathesome couple of days.

Arm & Car & Neurosis Update

M needs surgery, which will happen on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. The doctor will put a plate in his arm which will remain there forevermore.

My car needed $1400 worth of repairs, not $700, which is hardly surprising, but kind of a bummer since the trade in value on it is $1200.

I'm not going to NY to see A graduate from college or to go to MOMA or anything; I'm not going anywhere. But I do get to work all weekend! Yeah!

I would like to state for the record that 666 people have now visited this site and I'm really wondering if that is what is jinxing my life right now. Something sure as fuck is.

The Laundromat, The Vole - It's All Too Much

I went to the laundromat tonight with my piles of soaked and muddy bedding from Saturday's exciting Hot Springs camping excursion. Barfing up slightly used barbecue & Rolling Rock into the French Broad River at 8 am in the pouring rain and mud is an experience I highly recommend, but that's another story. This story is about stress and the laundromat.

I am stressed. I am having job issues. I am supposed to leave on a big ole road trip to NEW YORK CITY and other points, including a brief visit to an ex boyfriend (Jesus! I didn't lose 20 pounds yet! Oh holy shit!) on Friday night. However, this is all depending on what the bone doctor says about M's arm tomorrow morning at 10:30. And on how my car does: I discovered yesterday that my car needs a new clutch. I mean, I knew it needed a new clutch, has for a while, but having it confirmed by an actual mechanic was a big blow. A $700 blow to be exact. So now my car is going to the dealership in the morning to get a new clutch even though it isn't really broken. This sucks and flies against a certain kind of poverty stricken hippie common sense (it ain't broke, don't fix it!) but on the other hand I always get panic attacks on the highway and if I know the clutch might be going out that will give them something to feed on. Argh.

So. . the dog. . . the son's arm. . . the job. . . the clutch. And then I got home and there was a dead vole in the hallway. M cleaned it up. I tried to clean up the vole blood, but it wouldn't come up. It's like a permanent stain, like a psychic stain in a haunted British castle or something, like this was Queen Elizabeth I of the Vole Kingdom, and now it's going to haunt us. I suggested this to M and said - "that would rock, not."
"Not," he said, "not at all, that would really suck having a vole ghost around."
"It would be cool for like 5 minutes," I said, "and then it would get old."
"No," he said, "it would be okay for about 15 minutes and then it would be bad." There followed some discussion about the nature of ghosts in general - they can't, like, actually kill you with an axe or anything, they have to use your own mind against you, which in the case of a vole might be interesting.
"That's funny," I said, becoming hysterical, "I think I'll blog it."
"Jesus Christ Mom," he said. "You need help."

On googling, we discover it was not a vole. It was a shrew. Yuck. Whatever.

Oh and there was this guy in the laundromat who was really drunk and talking about how they caught the guy who raped his 85 year old grandmother. "He ain't never gonna rape nobody agin!" he said, with fervor. "That dude is sick, man! And he's born n' bred Madison County, just like me."

The Birds

So I watched The Birds again tonight. It was on behind the Westville, our community monthly walk in theatre. It was cold, and lightning flashed occasionally, and M kept leaving me alone with the lesbians in their deck chairs, and I was terrified. The first time I saw The Birds I think I was about 11; I watched it on TV with my mom. I was so scared I dreamt about it for weeks.

Now I am, for all intents and purposes, a grown up, and The Birds, which is older than I am (okay, only by a few months) should be laughable. M found it hysterical. It scared the piss out of me yet again. I had, in fact, to leave. I had to walk back to the bar and toss back a beer or two to calm myself down. The entire time, though, I was thinking about how badly Tippi Hedron and whoever that extremely cute guy was were handling the whole thing. I mean, did they have no basements in that town? M says, no flamethrowers?

When we got home I had a brief anti-bird, zombie, vampire attack drill, because it struck me that defending your home against all these things is essentially similar. M thinks I'm crazy and barricaded himself in his room with his cel phone, where I heard him explaining the madness of his mother. He'll thank me when the zombies come, no doubt. I shouted this through his bedroom door, but I don't think it helped. He didn't want to participate in the anti-bird/zombie drill. The fool.

We will have to use A’s room, because the basement is too scary and depressing in the best of times, and if you were down there because of a zombie or bird or vampire attack, well, you would quickly become suicidal and let them in. Probably take about 5 minutes. So, A’s room. It only has 2 windows and one exterior wall, so it’s the easiest to defend. There’s plywood by the front of the house (being white trash is so handy sometimes!) and we could quickly nail that up over the windows. Jackson, Theo and Barbieri have been mobilized to watch for suspicious bird actions. We can pile up quilts and stuffed animals against the interior walls, and drag the badminton racquets and baseball bats in from the shed. There’s canned beans and a bottle of Key Lime juice in the pantry, easily transportable across the hall to A’s room. We can live on that indefinitely, no doubt.

We’re ready.

The Broken Arm

So, it's Tuesday. I go to work for an hour, than pick up M and go to the orthopedic clinic. We wait there for 3 hours; the first two in the big crowded waiting room and the last one in the "cast room", which we share, first with a young couple who talk incessantly on their cel phones, rarely to each other, then with a family of serious rednecks who at least are entertaining. The nurse keeps saying that it should only be 20 more minutes. It isn't. During the first hour, I have to leave and go get the X rays from radiology. It has not occurred to any of the various doctors that the orthopedist might need them, so I drive over there and get the films. This actually happens faster than they say it is going to, and I am so grateful I almost cry. M reads Sports Illustrated, I read the April 2004 Vanity Fair and my mother, who has joined us there, reads Birds and Blooms.

I forgot my cigarettes & as a consequence I get nastier and nastier - also, hungrier & hungrier. Finally I drive to a store for cigs and then to Subway where I get takeout & bring it back to the cast room. This, naturally, summons the doctor at last.

He doesn't apologize for our over 3 hour wait, but he is otherwise nice. M has really done it this time: the break is bad; the bone is misaligned. The X-rays make me wince; the jagged edge of bone angled past the other half is really awful and makes me want to pass out or drink brandy or something else Victorian. Given M's advanced age (13.5) there are several treatment options; we opt for the middle one, which is to put it in a full cast and watch it carefully, hoping it realigns itself. If it doesn't, there will have to be surgery, a pin will be put in, or plates and a pin. The doctor suggests we get a second opinion and calls a pediatric orthopedic specialist. Then they put a cast on M. He is terrifyingly brave as they try to realign the bone; I have to leave the room. The cast is pink and black: very 80s London, I tell him comfortingly. Very retro cool.

Finally, 4 or so hours after we got there, we can leave. We pay them nothing - it will all come in giant bills eventually, especially since he now has to come back once a week for more X-rays.

The pediatric orthopedist's office is barren and cold. It's pouring outside now, and we gobbled our Subway sandwiches in the few blocks between orthopedist's offices. M reads Highlights, I read Parenting. We break down and analyze Goofus and Gallant; it makes no sense. M suggests a strongly worded letter to the editor. Children with serious problems come and go in the waiting room; I feel sad. Then we are taken to this doctor's cast room to wait some more: he offers plaster in camouflage, flowers, stars and bars, and a strange pastel pattern of random stripey things, and M is jealous. Finally we see the doctor, who is pleasant and concurs with our decision to wait and see. He talks a lot about how the bone in M's arm should be "as God made it." I want to say, Hey! God had nothing to do with it! I made that arm myself! but I'm too smart - and exhausted - to say anything.

M asked the doctor casually if it was still okay for him to go canoeing in Florida for 8 days, leaving on Thursday. The doctor starts to laugh and I like him more than I did. No way, he tells Miles. Absolutely not. And not much fun this summer either. So much for camp, I think. What is he going to do? He can't even play video games.

I asked both doctors: why does he keep breaking this arm? Is there a bone density issue? Does he need calcium? What's going on here? Bad luck, they told me. High energy and bad luck - there's nothing really wrong with him and his bones are fine.

Great. Poor M. Poor me. This had better be the last time, I tell him, or I'll cut that damn arm off myself.

The American Medical System is BROKEN.

So, M. broke his arm again. Yup. Third time in two years, same bat arm, same bat place. This is convenient, since, as we know, I'm going through bankruptcy, I'm kind of between health insurance plans, and several doctors offices in WNC do not like me now. However, the kid called yesterday and said he thought his arm was broken again, so home he came and today we embarked on a journey into the wonderful world of American middle class health care circa 2005.

Our journey begins at the family practitioner's office, where the scary office drones are perturbed by the fact that my insurance has changed and that I went there instead of the emergency room. I do have insurance (as of a week ago) but I'm not in the Blue Cross/Blue Shield computer yet. I have the plan number. I can't go to the emergency room; I can't afford it. I was hoping that the family doctor would tell me his arm was okay. Nope. Go get it xrayed, he said. Meanwhile, the office drones tell me I will have to pay for this visit in full, then when I get an actual insurance card I must bring it to them, they will xerox it, and then they will apply to get paid from Blue Cross, and then when they get paid, they will pay me back. Goodbye $55. They call the xray place for me and tell me to get on over there.

At this office we read Highlights, Parenting, National Geographic and Reader's Digest.

Off to the giant radiology clinic. The radiology clinic is full of old people, and, no surprise, they have M in the computer right there from the last two breaks. I go into my spiel about the insurance and they say, fine, we'll bill your old insurance. You can't do that, I say. Sure we can, they say, the old insurance will send it back and by then you'll have your new insurance and can bring it in and we'll bill the new insurance. If I had no insurance at all? I wouldn't be allowed through the door, I guess. So this is very nice of them. We're there for about 2 hours. M gets xrayed, then we sit and sit and sit, reading Car and Driver and Southern Living. Finally someone shows up to read the xrays. I crane my ears and overhear the word fracture, then there is a phone conference with the family doctor to which I am not invited, then they finally put me on the phone. Well it's broken, he says. You need to go to an orthopedist. Do I find one? I ask, or do you? He hems and haws and then allows that his staff will find one and call me.

By this time we're both starving, it's like 1:30. We get in the car, there is a brief flurry of phone calls; we go to the orthopedist we went to before. I still owe them money. We are flagged in the computer; the receptionist reacts to our presence with horror. I am eventually ushered in to see the financial manager. She is pretty nice while she tells me, no, I cannot come here ever again. She whispers a recommendation of another orthopedist.

I call the family practitioner again; his office staff are tired of me; they do not want to make more phone calls. I make them do it. They make an appointment at a big orthopedic clinic for tomorrow at 10:45. I go back to work, exhausted.

Mad New Age Mysticism Skillz & the Rebound Dog

What I am about to write is the kind of thing that, if somebody else told it to me, I would back away slowly, speaking in a reassuring tone of voice and looking for the exit. Then I might start laughing and throwing sticks at them. Nevertheless, I am going to go out on the proverbial limb here and let the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan:

I believe fate and my dead dog had something to do with bringing Jackson into my life. I think this is destiny at work.

*ducks, dodges sticks, laughs hysterically, slugs whiskey, listens to the Ramones*

No, really, seriously, I do. Although I am very scared about writing this down, because I'm afraid I'm cursing myself. My experience with gifts from the gods is that they usually tend to have more in common with the Monkey's Paw than with perfect Christmas presents from your favorite wealthy relative. Alas, but there you go. Also, every time I fall madly in love really quickly, it's doomed. It's also doomed when I fall in love slowly, but we won't invoke that example here. For our purposes, that example is not relevant. So I was terrified all day that I would get home and Jackson would have disappeared. He didn't, he hasn't, and I'm still in love with him. I think I needed him. I think Toby sent him. I think the gods took a hand and my guardian angel (okay, yeah, I know, but I kind of believe in them, not really, but kind of, just a little, I know it's ridiculous, but I swear to you I saw mine, when I was 8, and it was a big black dog. Naturally my guardian angel would take the form often ascribed to Satan - that's kind of why I still believe) but at any rate, my work life is sucking at kind of an all time low, I'm stressed, I'm not having sex, I miss my dog - and it would be just like Toby to bargain his way around heaven & make them send me another dog.

Which leads me to ask, is this my rebound dog? You know how when you break up with a lover, and the only thing you want in the world is another lover, so you find one, and he's actually some kind of horrifying troglodyte, but you can't see it, no, you fall in love overnight? Or maybe that's just me. So anyway, I lost Toby, as we know, and I've been devastated, and now I have a new dog. Is Jackson my rebound dog? Will I wake up horribly disillusioned some time in the next six months? That would suck. I'm enjoying this being in love feeling.

Never Post Quizzes

Heh.

I am: -9% Republican.

"You're a damn Commie! Where's Tailgunner Joe when we need him?"

Are You A Republican?

fliss may 05 bdwys

fliss may 05 bdwys
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

I am vain - fat, yes, that too - and vain. So here is the picture J took of me three days before my birthday, before I dyed my hair. And this is my ultra fab glamourously daring fashionable new shirt, sleazy polyester from the Cheap Slut Store, aka Ross Dress for Less. Taken at Broadways, everyone's favorite dive-y bar.

jackson

jackson
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

Well, here he is. He seems to pretty much be settling in, although the cats are being really horrible to him, and Theo is ambivalent. But I adore him - he's so smart and he puts his head back and bays and my heart just melts. Big dog for 8 months, isn't he? He just ate all the cat food and he wants to sleep in my bed.

Birthday Update

Okay, so I'm now the proud owner of a blind hound dog puppy, once named Tracker, soon to be named Jackson (as in Pollack, for the various splotches on his lovely white hide.)

Okay, okay, I said I wouldn't do it. I told everyone I met all day about how I wouldn't do it, while I told them the whole strange and miraculous story, about finding this puppy on my birthday, two weeks to the day since my old dog died, etc., etc. And. . .

well, of course I adopted him. I mean, for god's sake. Of course I did. And he is too cute for words. Here we are. I swore I wouldn't get another dog. Well, yet again I learn: never say never. Damn.

And as for the rest of the day, it was gruesome until I decided to just quit worrying about being pathetic and start telling every single passerby that it was MY BIRTHDAY BY GOD and then things started getting really fun. Went out drinking with my friends D. and J. (a different entirely D & J than on Saturday night, lo) and had a hamburger & fries & all is pretty much good in my world. Plus I am the richer by one adorable blind hound dog puppy. This is a good thing.

Happy Birthday to Me. . .

Well, so far I'm having a wonderful birthday. Seriously. I mean, I actually am. Note that it is 8:23 am - things could still go to hell - but so far this has been a great birthday. Last night I dyed my hair purple, well auburn with purplish streaks, and I can already tell that it was a very good move. I wanted to go get another tattoo too (I was depressed last night) but I chickened out. It's possible that I already have enough tattoos, and even though the one I was going to get wasn't a new one so much as it was an addition to an old one, still. It gets ridiculous.

So. I am 42 today. According to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy that's the meaning of the universe. So, I should get really wise right around now - or something - and also, it is a multiple of seven. Things move in sevens (she said cheerfully, putting on the tinfoil hat that is really always only a few inches away from her head. She can't help it. Conspiracy theorists run in her family. As, apparently, does speaking about oneself in the third person.) and seven years make a life cycle during which all your cells change over. I think. According to my mom one time when I was like 10, anyway, and she probably read it in the New York Times, so it must be true. And thus, today marks the beginning of a whole new life for me.

It's two weeks since Toby died (I got a damn letter from the vet yesterday, a 800th generation xerox of that sappy Rainbow Bridge poem; stupid thing looked like it had been used as a handkerchief before it was xeroxed; damn you nice people; I cried like a baby.) and he was 14, which is of course two sevens, and his death did mark the end of a whole era of my life. M will be 14 this year, and finish middle school, A will come home - in 3 weeks. She'll be moving in. Goodbye to me pretending to be 35 or so and not have a 22 year old daughter. Hello giant hot water bill.

Anyway. This morning I woke up, or Theo woke me up, as he likes to do. M pointed out last weekend that Theo barks at you when you don't obey his secret mind control waves. He stands there and thinks wake up, human!! at you and if that doesn't work (it actually often does; it's unnerving to be stared at like that) then he starts barking and trying to herd you into the kitchen. This morning he had both cats as accomplices. So I got up, really early, took out the trash and took Theo to the park. Where, mirabile dictu, there was not another living soul, so I could let him run, and I walked, and it was beautiful, if chilly (coldest spring I ever remember); there was mist on the water and birds abounding; it was utterly lovely and I'm very glad I went.

Then we got home and there was a little lost hound dog in the street. So we rescued him - he was a total sweetie, although he didn't seem to see very well. I brought him inside and then saw A, my adorably cute neighbor walking down the street with a leash in his hand. So I yelled, "Hey are you looking for a dog?" and he was - and this little dog, who is blind, is up for adoption. A. dogsits and walks dogs and volunteers for dog rescue organizations, etc. He is also a really talented painter and gorgeous, did I mention gorgeous? Also he has a motorcycle. And a girlfriend - of course. And I am NOT, not, not going to adopt that blind hound dog. No. No I'm not. Don't let me. Stop me someone. I am not that stupid. I have a dog and two cats. And two kids. Stop me before I adopt that blind hound dog, someone, please!

So this is my birthday morning and I am really happy that I managed to rescue that sweet little blind dog, that I went to the park, that the park was deserted (that's my own personal birthday present from the gods) and that I have purple hair. And I don't have to take a shower this morning since I took a long one last night! Wahooooo!