August 1, 2010

I demand a do-over for this week.

Let’s start with Monday night.

At a friend’s house we inadvertently eat a gluten-filled biscuit. Purely accidental. Gawd, wish it had been a donut. Filled with cream. And frosted. And the size of a freaking watermelon.

It’s now Tuesday. Where I’m bloated and gassy.  Things everyone wants to know. It is, however, a simple fact of gluten-intolerance. I’m also a little loopy this day.  The kid and I go visit people we love. The highlight was grabbing the wrong Trader Joe’s bag (the reusable ones) and taking it to the visit. It was filled with bras that no longer fit.  Filled.  The-laugh-till-I-hurt moment here was when my friend, H, put one boob cup over her head, and literally, I shit you not, could have simply snipped the other boob cup away and had a hat. Rather, skull cap. Boob cap? There is something inhumanely wrong with my boobs.

The kid and I go home. She’s having a hard time sleeping. One of the effects of gluten exposure for her. If gluten had a neck, I’d strangle it. And I wouldn’t even apologize to all of you gluten lovers. Which is ironic since I”m a gluten lover. It’s the pure kind of love though since I can’t eat it anymore.

After she’s finally in bed, and sleeping, I get started on some paperwork.  At about 2am, I hear:  “Mooooommyyyy, my nose is bleeding!”.  Not an uncommon occurence for a 4.5yo that likes to pick her nose like it’s a medal-awarding sport.  I grab a washcloth, wet it down, and head upstairs. To a bloody freaking crime scene.  She’d gotten up out of bed, dripping blood, to yell for me from the doorway. She’s still dripping blood. It’s on the sheets, her t-shirt, the floor. I just stand dumbfounded for a moment. Then it’s “Go sit on your bed and lay your head back to slow down the bleeding.”   She replies “But I already bleeded all over the pillows.” Of course you did, you little blood pouring machine.   I should totally hire her out for zombie slasher flicks.

Clean up crime scene. Change sheets. Clean up kid. Put kid in clean clothing. Get kid a snack. I mean, I wasn’t surprised she was hungry. Blood loss like that? Should’ve stuck an IV in her. After snack, it’s, oh, about 5am?  And then. Of all things. She. Cannot. Fall. Asleep. She does. Finally. At 7am. I pass right the eff out with her. Only to be shaken awake, at the EVIL!!!! hour of 9:15am to the wails of “Iiiii’mmmm huunnngrryyyyy.”

It’s Wednesday. I proceed to magically not kill a kid, make some sort of what I can only assume to be an edible item (please, don’t ask, I have no idea), than pass right the hell back out. To an endless loop of Diego. Let’s just say Wednesday?  It was a goner.

How an almost-five-year-old  can survive on a sum total of 5.5  hours of sleep is an unsolvable mathematical mystery.  How a mother of an-almost-five-year-old doesn’t employ an entire roll of duct tape and a locked closet after 2 hours of sleep with a child hyped up on 5.5 hours of sleep is simply a godly miracle.

Wednesday night I go to bed with my daughter. Obviously. Wake up two hours later. Obviously.  Check email. Obviously. Fall promptly back asleep on the couch. Obviously. Wake up again, around 11:30. Obvi-WHAT THE HELL?  The only way to share this joy is to make one of my bff’s suffer through a mostly incoherent phone call. Okay, completely incoherent. She loved it. Moments like these give friends ammunition for a lifetime.

The rational part of my brain that somehow was still functioning kept reminding me that I had dyeing to do the following day. So went back to bed.  That sleep lasted until 3am. Which deity did I piss off and what animal do I have to sacrifice to appease it? I did get myself back to sleep around 6am in the morning. Which an over tired kid then interrupted at about 8:45am. Duct tape is too good for her.

All the morning stuff  for Thursday is slogged through. I take the kid to V’s house since it’s a work day for me. Then jet off to pick up a friend so he can fulfill his personal laundry needs at my house. I pimp out my washer and dryer all the time. They love it.  I work on some sewing. And here’s the coup de gras of this week – I go to pick up the fourteen fat quarters of fabric I have ironed and laying flat, and it’s wet. Hmmm. How’d that happen? OMFG. What is that smell? What. Is. That. Smell?

Meet Cornelia. Mama cat. Stray rescued from a tree and given to daughter. Stray gets pregnant. Has kittens. Five. Stray cannot, will not use litter box. The bathroom sinks, bathroom mats, any towel on the floor, bath tub, and my closet are all fair game for little piles of poo and urination. The only thing this cat had going for her at this point was her kitties who still needed her crazy mama cat milk.

It’s urine. Most likely two or three passes at that. There are silk wine gift bags that are also wet. A baby gift. Three patterns that I’d just cut out of tracing paper and fabric. And some folded fabric that was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I hear some inhuman growling sound and realize it’s coming from me. It’s at this point I shriek. Who shrieks anymore?

I text V. I sit down. Cry for a few moments. Pick all the stuff up and stuff it in a box so I can wash it later. I mean, who interrupts their gay friend from doing laundry? I’m not that mean. I figure out what time I can drop cat off at shelter. I go pick up the kid, come get friend from house, take him home. Come back. Put kid in bed. Tell her she can read, play, whatever, but if she leaves that room there will be consequences. Dire.  “Mommy, what’s dire mean?”  “Certain death, baby, certain death.”

Put everything that’s been urinated upon in a soak. And then wash it. Cut out another baby gift. Well, cut out two. I feel weird giving a friend a gift for her baby that my cat peed on. I mean, after I’m assured it’s clean, I don’t mind selling it to a complete stranger.

I’m going to lose my business, aren’t I.

Check laundry. Nine. Nine! Silk bags do not make it. Cat pee is like this not awesome form of weak bleach. I think everything else is fine. I stick it in for another wash, and go watch True Blood and try not to think up recipes for baked/roasted/fried cat. Fail.

Fall asleep on couch. It’s Friday morning. I wash everything again. Get cat carrier. Put mama cat in cat carrier with lots of treats. Kid and I take her to shelter. Before y’all think I’m a total failure as a mom, I did ask the kid if she wanted to go or wait until she was at her papa’s. She wanted to go.

I surrender cat. Cry. 80% of those tears are because I know this wild cat is slated for certain death.  The other 20% is knowing the next day I won’t hear “Moooom, Cornelia crapped in the sink again. It stiiiiinnnkkkss.”  Kid wants to visit every other animal at the shelter. Which makes it all the more difficult to not weep incoherently.  The obvious answer to all that crying is ice cream. If only the heads of state would recognize ice cream’s ability to stop war. To Jeni’s we go. I drop her off at her dad’s. Go play Pendragon. Soothing to the soul. Return home. Iron fabric. Sew. Cry. Dote on five baby kittens who are very, very lonely.

Go to bed. Wake up four hours later. Go straight to work Saturday morning. Dye fabric. Usually a time of rejoicing and dancing to random muzak. Yeah. No. Urine + synthropol + soda ash + dye = failure. I manipulate, cajole, straighten fabric out, make sure I didn’t get something under fabric. No. I can tell where the cat peed. No flat dyeing here. It’s done. Pee dyeing? Can’t beat it. Can’t take it to client. Call client. Weep after call. Pack up and head to a friends’ house for a special doohicky that I can’t talk about. It’s, like, beyond awesome though. And if I don’t stop typing, I’ll say something that’ll leak the whole shebang.

Go to friend’s house afterward to say good bye to friend leaving to go back to Florida this morning. Bad friend, BAD!  Give her gifties. Succeed in not crying. Barely.  I was too poor and too flea-ridden to go see her the first two weeks she was in Ohio. Which sucked. And I’ll miss her. Even though she’s my internet chat whore buddy.  Succeed in not giving her a hug due to my fantastic I didn’t shower to make it to friends’ house after spending twelve hours dyeing body odor. I’m an awesome friend. Manage to not die during the 35 minute drive home.  Manage to not fall asleep until 5 am. Wake up at 10 this lovely Sunday morning. Beg the universe to give me a do-over. The universe chortles and then flat out almost collapses wheezing with laughter.

Sorry I almost killed y’all.

I think I’ll go take a shower now.

12:54 pm

How awesome?

This awesome:     >>>  TONS <<<

It goes a little something like this.

Dear laptop:

When I knock you over, you break.  This makes us both unhappy. Thank god you still worked or that hammer I was using to pry up baseboard before painting would have been used on you. We would have both cried electronic tears.  I know, I know, I should have looked before I stood up. But your profile is so slim, I didn’t pay enough attention.  I can’t close your lid and now you’re like a glorified, movable PC. But only in my house.  I bought a new cover for you. I hope I don’t break you more while I fix you. Because then my tears would be of the I’m-cut-off-from-the-interwebz-variety. And then I’d know the world was ending.

Love,

Me.

So, of course, surgery ensued.  I’m naturally mechanically inclined, so it was no big deal. Well, it was. Because my Pink Flamingo is now a Black Flamingo. Which I’m pretty sure doesn’t even exist.

First I open up Miss Pink Flamingo’s innards.  Yes. She’s dirty. Not in that way. Freak. How dirty would your laptop get if you couldn’t close it. Like ever?

Right.

Next, I get that thing I’m looking at now out of the top cover… oh, that’s right. The monitor. This is awesome.  How things work is rad, even if I don’t understand what those thingies do, seeing the thingies rocks.

Then I poke around a bit looking for a way to get said cover OFF. Separate, damn you, separate.

There we go. Wow, that was easy. No need for the swears. This time.

Side note: Dontcha love the background? That’s my bed sheet. On my couch. Because I had fleas. The sheet made me feel less all flea-like when sitting down. What? Neurotic? No. Not me. Go away.

After I got the Pink lid off. On went the Black one. If any of y’all know my daughter, you know she has a favorite color. And it’s not pink. Well, depends on the day. But I let her pick the color. And on that day, her reigning favorite was black.

RIP Pink Flamingo.  May you and your broken hinge rest forevermore in the great heavenly mist of destroyed computer components.

What the hell do I call my new one now?

Told you.  I’m awesome.

July 21, 2010

You’re probably wondering what the eff I am talking about.

Well. Between flea cleaning, mommying, laundry, cooking, sleeping (sort of), and working on my website, I dance through my Google Reader. There’s this blog I like by a hellaciously young woman, called Daddy Likey. The gal’s name is Winona. Her little intro reads “Daddy Likey is a blog about fashion. But sometimes I write haiku about chlamydia.” What’s not to love right there?

There’s these two things she does that really got my attention, and kept it enough to keep her in my Reader.

The first is her FMFFI – Five Men’s Fashion First Impressions section. Wherein she has five guys give her their first reaction to a fashion find. The most recent was these:

Hold on a sec while I go schedule an appointment with my chiropractor.

[puts down phone] Okay. Much better.

But that’s only half of what I like about her blog. And it’s definitely not the shoes.

The other half is her Don’t Show Your Chocha! segments.  Finally. Someone who has targeted the crotch blaring idiots.  I’ve always blanched when seeing these outfits in real life, in magazines, on television, at concerts, wondering if they consciously realized that they’d be flashing their chocha. Or caring that they are. Not that I’m one to judge fashion mistakes (a gay friend just informed me that my soccer mom look had improved; definitely more on that in later posts, as in wtf), but it’s like men going commando under their athletic shorts. That view is not for everyone. Most often, it’s not for anyone. Ever.

To whit – this is one of the latest examples from the Don’t Show Your Chocha segment from her blog. Note the title: “Knit Contrast Ruffle Dress”

This is not a dress. It’s not even a mini-dress.  A dress of any length covers ones’ crotch-aka-chocha in its entirety, whether your arms are up or down, crossed across your chest, or even nonexistent.  Anything that does not cover your crotch is a top. That is one fashionism I’ll take to my grave. But what the hell do I know about couture? I know enough that unless I’m taking a shower or working in porn, my chocha gets covered up. And I only do one of those two things, so rest assured my chocha gets covered up post-cleansing routine, stat.

Also rest assured that all the things I sew or knit for kids or women do not, in any way, reveal the chocha. Even by special request. You’ll have to go and pay the big bucks to Gianni Versace for that petty privilege.

Though, to be perfectly fair, it’s a toss up of fashion fug between the chocha blaring skirts and the socks/heels combo.

Thanks Winona. Also, thanks for letting me steal your photos without asking. That was nice of you. Keep up the chocha work.

3:25 am

July 19, 2010

So where’s the website, you might ask. Where are your products,  you might also ask. You could then even ask why anything isn’t being done here, And I’d simply answer:

Fleas.
Yes. Fleas. I do not have an infestation. But I did have a problem. Apparently most of the heated northern hemisphere is having a problem.  With the fleas, that is. However, for the past three weeks, dealing with this problem entails the following:

Washing every scrap of clothing. Every. Single. Item. All sheets, towels, drapes, pillows, pillowcases. Vacuuming every single crevice in your home. Vacuuming every surface area you can reach of your furniture. Using a citrus spray solution to clean anything hardwood or not vacuum-able.  Why citrus? Citrus repels and kills. It’s like the best flea gun ever. Also, bathing all animals in the house every three days or so is required.  And since there are now 7 animals, not counting me or the kid, there’s some time spent in the bathroom.

Why the problem then? Well, I had two cats. One was a rescue given to my daughter. Before I could get the rescue fixed, she got the pregnant flu. Teen cat pregnancy at its finest. Both cats were outdoor cats. Where the flea population is (as I learned afterward), and numbers far more than the grains of sand on all the beaches in the world. Those cats became indoor cats. The pregnant one gave birth to five gorgeous kittens.  The fleas also gave birth to other fleas. At an exponential rate.

Since you can’t use anything toxic around baby kittens, and you also cannot use an over the counter flea treatment on mama cat until said kittens are 6 weeks+ old, I had to use alternative means. i.e. citrus spray, peppermint oil spray, constant, constant, constant vacuuming, washing any clothing that touched the ground. My washer hates me. Passionately.  And then, more cleaning. However, I finally got my order of diatemacious earth (DE) in. It’s this fantastic powder that is made from grinding diatoms, incredibly razor sharp shells that slice and dice flea eggs, larvae, and gets through the adults’ armor and kills them via dehydration. Nothing could make me happier. Like, ever.

It took over 6 hours to clean two rooms and the kitchen and treat with the DE. Because, as was mentioned above, you have to clean every nook and cranny and then some. Now I’m doing the stairs and the upstairs. The only thing helping me find my happy place is that whatever remains of the fleas are screaming as they die.

Every thing I’ve made for sale, has been washed. Every thing I had in progress has been washed. And some of those things had to be trashed since unfinished and unsewn edges like to ravel and sometimes actually pull whole sections out. I’m further behind in work than I dreamed of.

Oh, and I have a leaking pipe in the basement. This I also lay at the feet, or whatever, of the fleas. Because it’s all their fault. Back to cleaning I go. Once this problem is resolved, then I can continue on my merry fucking way of doing things that make me happy. I clean when I’m angry to calm down. All this forced cleaning does not have the same effect. It makes me sweaty, very sweaty, dirty, and somewhat grumpy. There’s no calming down until I’m done, can take a break and watch some True Blood.

Moral of this story? Fleas can suck it.

2:27 pm

July 14, 2010

I’m back. Ish. As you can see, this place is still getting cleaned up.  Lots of life changes and found a new setup to do what I need.  Finally. Found a solution to my blog/shop needs (shout out to Market Theme for realz).  This kinda stuff is not in my bag ‘o skills, so I’m slogging through.

However, I can torture the general populace with my blogging now. Good times!  Welcome.

First: Yes, I know this is called “Me Blog”. It was supposed to be “My Blog”, but I mistyped it.  It sounds all piratey, and I like it.

Second: I write like I think. Be forewarned, matey. (See how “Me Blog” is already working for me?)  There’ll be stuff on being gluten free, home renovating, gardening, being a single mom, tutorials, stuff I like, random things that pop into my head, stuff in my shop, and well, just about anything else.

Comment, talk to me, ask questions, ignore the swearing, don’t be too mean, and we’ll all get along perfectly.

Third: Oh, there is no third. My list just seemed woefully short at Second:

8:47 pm