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News Round-Up or “Dropping Links” (like they’re going out of style)
I didn’t actually go out to the sticks just because I was discombobulated and needed some extra hands to help me hold the baby all the live long day. I actually went out because my Grandma turned 80 and there were all kinds of fun festivities planned. But of course going home to your mom’s when you’re feeling discombobulated is always good too.
My Aunts, Mom and Uncle (my Grandma had 5 girls and one boy) threw my Grandma the greatest birthday surprise of all time. You can read a better version of it here and here. But I’ll give you the cliff notes version.
It started out with my Aunt Kedge just taking my Grandma out for a quiet birthday dinner at a little Italian restaurant in town. Then as they were minding their own business at a little table for two, my Aunt Cracker Crumbs and her husband showed up. No big deal. They just happened to be in the area and felt like Italian. Then my mom and another Aunt (who doesn’t have a blog yet) also showed up and the non-blogging Aunt had birthday presents! So they had to move to a bigger table, a table with flowers! My Grandma thought that was her surprise and was feeling quite tickled but of course it doesn’t stop there. THEN my Uncle Snutch (who flew in from Northern California) posed as a waiter and offered to fill her water glass. My Grandma was so surprised to see him she started crying. Then for the cherry on top my Aunt Knittery from Canada called on her cell phone and as Grandma was saying thank you for the birthday phone call, my Aunt Knittery walked up to Grandma and gave her a hug from behind. It was a surprise of all surprises. Can you imagine having all six of your kids showing up to surprise you on your 80th birthday? It was so cool, I almost wanted to sneak over and watch the event through the window.
The rest of us riff raff family members weren’t invited to the special surprise dinner (I don’t think we could all fit in the restaurant) but we were invited to a big Sunday dinner a few days later at my non-blogging Aunt’s house. There are so many birthdays around this time in my family, I can’t remember who exactly we were celebrating for. But it doesn’t matter. It’s just fun to be back at a big long table full of laughing relatives.
Baby Bug really liked it too. She’s suffering from a touch of stranger anxiety right now but she took to my fun loving Aunts (and Uncle) in no time. Before I knew it they were teaching her Sunday School songs with hand motions. Now I just have to teach Toby the songs because she wants to practice the hand motions all the time.
It was really fun to see my Uncle Snutch and Aunt Knittery again. I haven’t seen either of them in about twenty-some years. My Uncle is hilarious. He has the best sense of humor of all time. I wish I could regurgitate some of his rambling dialogue but I’m not clever enough to remember all the words. You’ll just have to believe me. He’s funny. My Aunt Knittery is a crack up too. I really missed her. We got to hang out quite a bit and we found that we both love Starbucks. Of course a latte or two was in order.
So along with all the catching up and some quality niece time at my mom’s (along with her forty-seven kittens–did I mention that?), I’d say it was a whole lot of fun. Definitely just what the doctor ordered for girls who are in a funk.
And with that I’ll leave you with a photo of Baby Bug and her new bunny from Aunt Knittery.
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Back to our Regularly Scheduled Programming
The quality of this blog post depends entirely on how much longer Baby Bug takes a nap. She’s already been down for an hour so I’ll be lucky if I can type for a half an hour longer.
She is so sweet when she’s sleeping. She’s sweet when she’s awake too but there is no way I can blog or do anything else other than pay attention to her when she is awake. She’s started to climb up on things and pull herself into standing position. Her favorite thing to climb is my wooden chair that I’m sitting in at my desk right now. There I am typing away, answering an email or something and I start to feel these little fingers on my lap. I look down and there’s a little person staring right back at me! Up! She wants up! She wants up in my lap.
I oblige and lift her up so she can see my desk and laptop screen. In my imagination I think we could type away happily with her sitting on my lap. In reality there is no such thing. She wants to eat my mouse. She wants to climb up onto my desk and slobber onto my keyboard. She wants my pencil and my cell phone and the tail of the cat that just happens to be sleeping near by. She doesn’t want to play quietly with her one hundred and one toys on the floor. She wants to play with my toys. The ones that have cords and plugs and go beep and click click. Silly Baby.
So where have I been these last few days? I have so much unfinished business to blog about. I apologize for leaving this blog in a lurch last Wednesday. Those of you who guessed pms were right. Blakety-blank you!! Why do you have to be so right all the time? Can’t a girl have a little mystery and dignity? Apparently not.
Apparently I can’t handle my emotions all that well either. Thankfully, I didn’t blow up at anybody. In fact when Toby called me on the road, after I just packed up and left town without so much as a note, I was calm cool and collected and told him I loved him and that nothing was wrong. Nothing is wrong. Ha!
Poor Toby. He is so understanding of me and my crazy zig zag moods. I told him how hard it was for me to distinguish between what was really making me upset and what was just my hormones making me super uber sensitive. He said he understood. “It’s kinda like being a teenager all over again, isn’t it?” he says. “You don’t know which way is up.”
He’s right. Now that I’m feeling like myself again I can’t for the life of me figure out what made me so upset in the first place. What, a little over-worked from housework and a demanding baby! Pshaw! What’s that! You can’t finish your freelance work and your clients are starting to get worried? That’s just another day at the office. Big deal! You don’t know what to fix for dinner and you have no money left in your checking account! Whoopti-doodle doo. There are people all over who don’t even have checking accounts! Get over it Brenda. Life is tough and then you move on.
So this is me moving on. I’m trying to keep myself “centered”… which reminds me of a funny story about a girl I used to work with. But I guess I’ll have to save that for another blog (along with the saga about the 70’s crib) because the baby just woke up!
