Weaktoast For Breakfast

Happy Mother's Day, Neva.

2010-05-07T01:21:00.000-07:00

Dear Neva,

Someday, you may choose to have children and fulfill my dreams of being a grandmother. You’ll think being pregnant is really difficult, and then you’ll have the baby and realize you just wasted your last chance ever to sleep through the night.

But do not despair, my love, because someday your child will be seven, and this will be the best year of your lives.

You are seven years old right now as I’m writing this to you. Just to put things in perspective, your daddy has been home from the Army for eight months, and sometimes I am still amazed at how wonderful it is to split all the parenting jobs between two people instead of doing them all so poorly by myself. I hope I didn’t mess you up too much, but there’s a chance I did, and if that’s the case I assume you’ll be reading this letter in the midst of a therapy session. Sorry. Anyhow, Daddy is home, and your favorite thing about having him here is so that you have someone to shoot Nerf guns at (since I am off-limits) and someone to bicker with (much to my eternal eye-rolling dismay) and someone else to call a Poop Face when I am at work. Today is May 7th, technically, and I am about to graduate from college. I should be studying or sleeping, especially considering that it is 12:33 in the morning and I am a very, very old college senior, but what I really want to do right now is wake you up so we can go jump on the bed. It seems suddenly very important to me that we jump on the bed immediately if not sooner, because maybe I haven’t let you do that before, and it is a VERY IMPORTANT PART OF BEING A CHILD! My second inclination is to crawl into your tiny bed and hug you until I fall asleep, only to wake up with you snoring and/or drooling into my ear while you violently kick me out of the bed. If you become a mother, this will make perfect sense to you. If you don’t, there is no way I can possibly ever explain the strange ache that a mother feels when she wants to hold her baby and, for some reason, is unable to at this very second.

I suppose one reason I am feeling so very sentimental is that it is spring, and by (finally) graduating from college I am sort of leaving the very last shred of my youth behind me. Also, Mother’s Day is two days from now, and I am lucky enough to be a Mom two times over. That empty arm feeling I was trying to explain earlier is very common for me this time of year, because your brother’s birthday should have been around April 9th. He would have been five this year. Someday when my tears are not threatening to blur the monitor, I will write you a letter that attempts, and fails, to thank you for all the hugs and kisses and headaches and comforts and Fecal-Related-Nicknames you have given to me on his behalf, and how having you around was (and still is) the biggest comfort for me in going through the horrible grieving process that is losing a baby. I hope you never understand that.

What’s so great about seven? You are really getting the hang of this reading thing, which is great because Mom and Dad are also really into words. Just ahead on the horizon, I can see the two of us sitting snug in some pretentious coffee shop reading our books and sharing a scone.

Even better than that idyllic future is the present. My favorite thing to do with you recently is trick you into believing that we have some terribly boring chore to accomplish, and then totally blindsiding you with a cheap-as-can-be Mama/Neva date. (For example, last weekend I told you we needed to go buy toothpaste. While that was true, and we did actually buy toothpaste, the real purpose of the outing was to let you illegally ride up front in the passenger seat and hold hands with me while we drove to McDonald’s to buy vanilla ice cream cones. You’re old enough to eat them without getting drippy ice cream everywhere, but your permanent teeth are still very sensitive to the cold ice cream when you get down to the cone, so I had to bite the cone into pieces and feed them to you by hand in the Walmart parking lot before we went to buy the toothpaste.)

Another favorite activity recently involves us cooing at each other, because you are my baby bird and I am your Mama bird. You often remember this game in public, and I am often too embarrassed by my cooing companion to play along, but sometimes you overwhelm me and we dance around like a pair of brain dead pigeons in the middle of the produce section, and I am certain that the people staring at us are EATING THEIR HEARTS OUT with jealousy. And that’s probably mostly because their children are eight, or something, and the magic that is seven is nothing but a distant memory.

You are old enough to sleep through the entire night in your room 99 out of 100 days, but young enough to wake me up and tell me that you had a nightmare where you sucked a giant red spider down your throat through a straw last night. You are young enough to crawl into bed with me in the morning and tell me you want me to snuggle you without using any words, but you are old enough to crawl back out of bed and get dressed when we give up trying to make time stand still. You are old enough to decide how you would like to wear your hair every day, but you are young enough to wince your way through my incompetent styling. You are young enough to call me Mama, but old enough to know you only do that because I prefer it to Mom.

I don’t anticipate any more babies in my future, beautiful girl, at least not until you’re the one who has to change most of their diapers. But between now and then, I want you to know that you are the best gift I could have ever been given. Thank you for making me your Mama Bird; you are my Happy Mother’s Day card.

Oh, lovelies

2010-03-02T15:19:00.000-08:00

It has been more than two years since I have posted, which is so very, very weak of me. If it weren't for Jill, I probably wouldn't ever write at all. Amusingly enough, since my last post, my Darling Husband has (as promised long ago, he's never been a jerk about this) opted for birth control of the delightfully permanent variety. For those of you who haven't already clicked that link, you should know that it's probably NSFW. For those of you who did -- sorry. (: That'll learn ya!

HAHA!

Anyhow, I've managed to accomplish a little bit more in the past two years than just insure my child's sole inheritance of all my worldly goods. I moved closer to my folks, went back to school, went back to work, bought a home, moved again, and then was finally reunited with my husband when he came home from Iraq by way of Texas, and got out of the Army.

Birth Control to Major Tom

2008-02-12T08:32:00.001-08:00

What an awesome year it's been for weaktoast. I've not written a single word, and the only person who's missed my rampant, senseless blogging is IDK, my BFF Jill.
As Jill knows, my computer is broken and I don't have internet access and I don't care enough about her blog-reading needs to blog from the library. Today, however, I am babysitting my friend Bex's baby, the world's cutest boy-child, Mikey. He's lovely. He's sleeping. I am certain that any moment he will sprout horns and the wings of a demon, leap out of his bouncy chair, and circle the ceiling, breathing fire and raining down showers of acid-drool.

I suck at babies.

Allow me to be clear: I do not suck babies, nor do I suck[le] at them the way mosquitoes withdraw from my bank of sweet life-giving blood. I suck at babies the way some people suck at surgery. Unfortunately, there is no school to weed people like me out of the birthing pool, so I am free to reproduce at will--or in this case, to watch after someone else's reproductive...er, produce. It doesn't help that I got no more than four hours of sleep last night. Also, my loinfruit climbed into bed with me at some point, suffering from a nightmare. This morning she confessed that said nightmare was nothing more than a fabricated excuse to come interrupt my sleep and smack me about the face while she slept.

Immediately upon waking, I shuffled to the kitchen to take my Lexapro. Perhaps I ought to have taken two.

Laundromat Awards

2007-02-11T22:35:00.000-08:00

Tonight, like half of the world, my family watched The Grammys. I did not watch all of it, nor did I even pay close attention to what was on the screen. What I did get a kick out of was the way my child suddenly gave up her life as Anna Sewell's Black Beauty in favor of a singing career. Apparently, any genre of music will do, so long as she can be holding a microphone. When Carrie Underwood sang, my child tugged the dirty sock off her foot and held it up to her mouth. She closed her eyes and furrowed her small brow and even swayed left and right to the music. Best of all, she contorted her mouth into some amazing shapes. If I had been on top of things, I'd have taken some pictures for you. When Gnarls Barkley played Crazy, she recognized it as the song that plays on my phone whenever my husband calls.
"Mom, we have this one, don't we?"
"Yes, honey, we do."
My husband cast me a slightly disparaging look.
"Well I think you're craaaaaaazy! I think you're craaaaaazzzyyyyyyy!" et cetera. She could use a little pitch correction, but ladies and gentlemen that is what Pro Tools is for!
At one point, she even bravely exclaimed,
"Mom, I am a star!" Yes you are, baby, yes you are. I love you.
As per usual, the Grammys were otherwise a festival of sadness for me. The highlight of the evening was getting to see the lovely, incredibly beautiful and talented Imogen Heap with a delicious salad in her hair. I haven't been able to find any pictures of it with Google Images yet, but in all seriousness I thought it was beautiful, even though this will probably go down with the infamous Swan Dress.
Next year, when Neva performs at the Grammys, she is going to go dressed in papier-mâché helmet shaped like a cuttlefish. Her elegant gown will be designed by Karl Lagerfeld. When she stands up to accept her award, she will be more than a star.

She will be thanking me for making sure her socks were clean.

Weaktoast Rides Again

2007-02-10T18:42:00.000-08:00

We live in Texas, and my child loves horses with a fervor nothing short of that of the Ebola virus. Thanks to this, and also to the fact that we just bought the movie Flicka, horses are a regular topic of conversation at our house, that is when we are not galloping around the kitchen table and whinnying. This weekend, my husband got to work an extra shift to babysit some Privates (that rank never, ever gets un-funny) who made the mistake of getting caught while being intoxicated and under the legal age. Having taken him some dinner (fifteen dollars worth of food from Taco Bell), my daughter and I drove home to enjoy an evening roll in the paddock and maybe a nice graze before heading to our respective stalls to stand up and sleep all night long. On the way we traveled for about a half mile behind a truck hauling a horse trailer. This is not rare. Even on days when I do not leave the house I see about thirteen of these. We had the following conversation.
"Look, mommy, a horse thing!"
"Yes, honey, a horse trailer."
"Horses go in there!"
"Yes, very good! You're a very smart girl."
This particular horse trailer was empty, and though it was dark we were close enough for her to use her supernatural night vision and see that for herself.
"I guess somebody wants a horse."
"Oh yeah? Who's that?"
"That guy," and she motioned toward the truck. Even at the tender age of three, she has already associated huge trucks hauling trailers with masculinity. I'm half concerned and half excited because maybe in eighteen or thirty years she will marry someone with a ranch and I will finally get to ride horses and fall off them and break my hip because I will be eighty-two.
"Oh, he does?"
"Well," there's a tone in her voice that betrays she is giving this topic extra consideration and is probably about to tell the truth about something. "I guess I do."
"Oh, you do. Well I want a horse, too, but we don't have one."
"We could build a trap to catch one!"
I politely refrained from laughter and coughed into my shoulder. She continued.
"Yeah! We could be cowgirls and daddy could be a cowboy!"
I can just picture it, a shoebox propped up on a stick with a carrot inside and my daughter hiding six feet away with a piece of string waiting for her horse to come along and be caught. All in all, I am very proud of her for this pattern of thinking, she's an excellent problem solver.

Next month she is going to tackle our budget.

When I was your age, television was called books.

2007-02-06T09:43:00.001-08:00

As an eager book-devourer in my youth and as an aspiring writer now, I've always appreciated that quote from The Princess Bride. We are a culture that no longer reads anything longer than a myspace comment. The sorts of books that get any readership are laughable at best to any academic community (Yes I'm talking about Dan Brown) and quality writing is rarely rewarded with any amount of readership (a recent exception with Susannah Clarke's success). As a me-driven society we are obsessed by anyone else as selfish as ourselves. We are enthralled by the concept of an egocentric existence (allow me to point out the James Frey fiasco).

Book Clubs are becoming something chic. They read Made for Television novels and all go see the film together when it gets to the dollar theatre. A good book should stand well on its own without a movie deal. This is not to say that good books do not yield good films. This does argue that maybe you shouldn't buy your next book from the same place you buy low fat yogurt and tampons/diapers/condoms what-have-you. Maybe bookstores have better selections of books. Maybe independent bookstores have better books by unheard-of-authors. Maybe the future is in internet-based self-publishing.

Having finished my diatribe, I'd like to recommend some further reading for you, my brave readers. Up-and-coming writer Todd Keisling (myspace, lulu, deviantArt) has released his second self-published book entitled A Life Transparent. You should pick it up. For a modest price you can grab a signed copy as proof that you were onto him when he was still indie rock. The proceeds go toward his wedding, which I plan on crashing. I promise to let you know if he spent your money wisely.

Honestly, I'm reading this book right now and it's excellent. It's not stuffy and scholarly but it is very well written. It's fast-paced and exciting and I'll be a bit pissy when it's ended. If you're my mother, I've already purchased a copy for you--but if you're not, you should buy a copy. If you're my brother, you should buy a copy because there's a surprise at the end. Everyone else, you should buy a copy because it's damn excellent reading, and lets be honest. You don't read a lot now that college/high school/Reading Rainbow is behind you.

Go on, get a move on it.

Just when things were getting boring.

2006-12-04T10:52:00.000-08:00

I've been gone because we've spent the last two weeks in Arizona, for Thanksgiving. It was a deliciously uneventful time, and even the drive home was mostly relaxing. I spent a good deal of it composing new, hilarious blogs for you to read. Here's the first:

I'm driving through Texas (flat) after sunset (dark) and listening to Sigur Rós's geniuswork Takk. Every time I see the name 'Sigur Rós' I cannot help but think of 'Suge Knight'--I realise this is a pretty screwed up association, but there's no stopping it. It makes me wish I had sweet deejaying skills, you know? I'd mix clips of Takk with clips of all the people Knight has been accused of killing, a la Danger Mouse, and make myself Internetally famous. I'd call the album 'Gatt'. And then I'd be shot.

The second was a hilarious rant about the disproportionately high roadkill statistics in Texas versus those of other states. I'd have produced witty images and clever remarks about how Texans barbeque so much in order to mask the odor of dead animals cooking under solar unfluence on an asphalt griddle.

Instead, about an hour before we got home, our landlady called my husband. Our duplex had caught fire. Right now, we're staying in a hotel courtesy of The Red Cross and our animals are stuck at the (burnt out) house because the hotel wouldn't let us bring them here. Long story short, we have to move again.
Here's the tally so far for 2006:

1 fried television set
1 pair of broken glasses
1 cancer scare
1 poetry rejection
2 counseling sessions
lots of dirty panties
lots of dog piddles
3 moves, 1 pending
3 car accidents, 1 totalled vehicle
2 friendships lost (a lesson in not living with your financially burdened friends)
1 house burnt down

I cry Uncle. Mercy. You win, 2006. All I ask is that you give me a rest for the next 27 days and then go quietly into the past. Don't say terrible things to 2007 about me, please, because I'm really hoping the two of us will get along just fine.

The moral of the story: Please don't give your seven year old a lighter.

2006-11-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

This week has been a flurry of inadequate sleep, irregular waking hours, and trying to cram too many things to do into too little time. On top of this I'm supposed to be writing a novel, remember? So here it is, 4:42 a.m. and I'm pecking away at the keyboard. I went to bed before nine, woke up thirsty before midnight after having dreams about Mafioso rodents, and have since suffered all manner of inconveniences.

First, I got a drink of water. It wasn't nearly cold enough. I went back to bed. My husband started snoring. I tossed and turned, got too hot and then too cold, and got up again to--guess what?--check my e-mail and get some minor online things accomplished. At about 1:30 I went back to bed, only to wake up my husband. He drank the rest of my water, went to get himself some more, and didn't bring me back any. Oh well. I found a comfy position and allllllmost fell back asleep when I heard

"Mommy!" It was more urgent than frightened, as if she were demanding to know why she had awoken. I laid in bed with her for a while, her arms wrapped all cuddly-like around my neck, reveling in one of the inarguably best moments of mommyhood, and she began smacking her lips. There's to express my reaction to that than :|

I got her a glass of water. She drank it. Then it of course was time to go pee. She insisted upon turning on every light in the bathroom (okay it's only two but it feels like eighteen at 2am). We chatted while she took care of her bladder.

"What did you dream about?"

"I think Shrek. And Over the Hedge. And Donkey." My child, raised not by wolves but by Dreamworks Animation and a DVD player, or so she'd have you believe.

I put her back in bed, whereupon she wailed not to be left alone. Her wailing triggered something in the cat, who began to wordlessly follow suit. At least one of them had an argument, he was out of food. The child was calmed, the cat was fed, and I went back to my lovely bed and its clean sheets. My cat, full but now lonely, would not be deterred. I mumbled an apology to my husband and tripped out to the livingroom where I spoiled the cat with love and read some eighty pages of Mario Puzo's The Godfather.

I had every intention here of describing my daughter's social antics for the past two days, but I didn't quite get there. Remind me tomorrow.

Half-full or half-creepy?

2006-11-09T12:58:00.000-08:00

So I keep falling into this cycle: stay up late writing, go to bed just before the sun rises, feel like sewage all day long. I bet you're guessing today is no exception. And you know what? That sort of deductive reasoning is what separates weaktoast blog readers from the chaff. Last night, right about two-thirty a.m., I was starting to feel guilty about a couple things. The first was that I hadn't accomplished much on the novelling front. The second was that I also had not gone to bed. Frankly, I accomplished nothing much yesterday, other than writing up a pretty in-depth critique on a poem or two and posting a rather thoughtful journal on a different website. Just this morning I pimped this out on myspace, so hello to any new readers I might have.

Enough, I had a point. Remember? When I started, this blog was about not getting enough sleep.

So at 2:30, just when I was thinking about going to bed, my kid awoke from a nightmare. If there's one thing I did right in my childrearing as of yet, I managed to have a kid who only has nightmares when I am still awake. This is great, because my computer desk is a mere six and a half feet from her doorway. I've since moved said desk away from the litterbox and into the livingroom, because I'd rather smell a clean fishtank than a litter box, even when it gets seen to every day.

In my family, the secret to ending nightmares is to go to the bathroom. Have a bad dream, pee, and return to blissful, terror-free slumber. I'm grateful that my parents figured this out with my sleepwalking brother. (Hi Nate.)

This morning, while my husband was at PT, she awoke again. Because I'd stayed awake for another hour after the nightmare episode, I was not keen on getting out of bed at 6am. Fortunately for me, she was't fully committed either so she crawled into bed with me and fell asleep. Here's where things get weird.

At about 8:35 I opened one eye partway to see my husband taking pictures of us with his cellphone. As my daughter was still dead to the world and I still wished I was, I closed the eye and pretended that I just needed to pee. I fell back asleep and only recalled this episode after awakening from my afternoon nap (haha), which I took while my daughter watched Shrek for the eighth time this week.

So you tell me, is this cute? or sort of creepy?

Long days, nights that should have been shorter.

2006-11-07T10:59:00.000-08:00

Last night, in my dual-pronged quest to a) become America’s Next Top Mama and b) actually get a little bit of writing done (surprise, when it comes to writing I am such a procrastinator that I literally cannot produce anything before 11pm) I sunk to new lows of parental bribery.

By some fortunate and rare twist of fate, my husband actually got half a day’s R&R to make up for losing his Saturday to the US Army. This allowed me the uncommon luxury of retreating to my bedroom for about an hour and a half to eat my lunch and read a book while I listened to some low-volume music. Despite the fact that I could still hear the boisterous songs of Henson’s Fraggles in the living room, it was like taking a mini vacation.

The miracles didn’t seem like they had any intention of stopping. I managed to spiff up the kitchen just in time to wreck it again by working on my hummus recipe. With a successful result there it was time to make pita bread, because hummus isn’t really a stand-alone sort of dish. Just an aside…

1 16oz can of chick peas/garbanzo beans, rinsed and placed in a blender with
¾ to 1 cup of water, added slowly while pulsing the legumes until it forms a lumpy paste
2 to 3 tsp Bragg’s liquid amino acids or lemon juice to taste
salt and
2 to 3 cloves of garlic and I promise this will be plenty plus
3 to 4 tsp tahini and
a splash of olive oil just blend it until it doesn’t feel like you’re eating a tongue anymore

The child, having been up since roughly 7am, took one of her bi-annual naps (and there was much rejoicing) while I made pita bread, cleaned the kitchen again, and wrecked it by making asparagus, a noodle side, and pork loin for dinner. My husband helped start and extinguish a fire and fixed every mistake I made with the pork loin, God bless him. She woke up just before dinner was done cooking.

After my husband went to bed, my daughter and I saw up watching movies and writing novels (respectively) until about three a.m. In a moment of premonition, as if knowing something terrible would happen between evening and morning, I wrote the first half of the blog. I managed to put my daughter to bed without getting kicked in the face by her protest-tantrum, and I shortly followed suit.

I had ominous dreams all night. In one of them, I was back in school attending some sort of international media-frenzied political conference. I had to write arguments and prepare briefs and I can’t even begin to explain the horrors I felt. In another dream we figured out how the dog was escaping from our back yard—because somehow there was no fence attached to the house ‘round the left side. In actuality, that side of the house is the other half of the duplex, but in my dream it made perfect sense. I was trying to wrangle the dog and also save the cat from an unknown neighbor’s attack falcon (I could start a whole new blog just about my dreams, believe me) when I awoke with a start to m husband opening and closing the front door.

This event occurs three times a day at my house: first when my husband comes home from Physical Training around 7:30 in the morning. It happens again if and when he comes home for lunch during the day, at around 11:45, and it happens again when he gets home in the evening. My level of exhaustion convinced me that it was the first of these events. The sound of my husband chastising my daughter caused a panic in me, and I got up, checking the clock on the way to the hall. 11:23—he was home early for lunch.

I don’t mean to brag on my terrible parenting or anything, but when you’re bad at something you just can’t hide all that away. Apparently, my daughter has the capacity to move without making any sound louder than that of a key in a front door, seeing as that noise was what eventually awakened me. I have this mental image of her tiptoeing around the living room in a pink version of Cruise’s Mission Impossible getup with one of those decibel measuring devices they have in all those jewel heist movies these days. I don’t know how long she was awake, but she managed to:

• eat an entire package of Orbit gum
• feed the dog two envelopes of liver training treats (see if I can ever get him to sit on command again)
• locate the scissors and after sampling and disapproving of the cinnamon flavored Orbit, cut every stick into tiny pieces instead
• fill the dog’s already full food bowl to overflowing and
• eat twenty or thirty cherry cordial filled Hershey Kisses.

She confessed to a whole gang of other crimes, but neither could I understand her nor find any more evidence of wrongdoing. She cleaned up the overzealous dog food while my husband and I eliminated the gum wrappers and he talked to her about the amputationary (amputative? amputationic? none of these words are in my spellchecker) powers of Henckles kitchen shears. Afterward he went for a lie down and she and I had a little chat about gum and stomachs and seven years. She seemed totally unimpressed. What it all comes down to, people, is that soon People Magazine will release a special collector’s cover featuring America’s Next Top Mama and I will definitely be one of them.

Get out your cell phones, America, I’m going for Idol next.

The price of dignity.

2006-10-29T12:13:00.000-08:00

Why is it that dignity, like trust, is so difficult to earn and so easy to lose all at once? Last night I was enjoying a rare latte with a writer friend at Starbucks. I ordered our drinks and my friend excused himself to the bathroom. When he came back we chatted for a bit and then I stood and announced, not quietly mind you, that I was "going to go potty, too."

He turned an admirable shade of cerise and the commentators in my mind were quick to run the replay. I turned and headed for the bathroom--panicked--and turned back to the table where I dropped to my knees.

"I just want to say I am really sorry for saying the word 'potty' to you so loudly. I promise I am just as embarrassed as you are, and if you like we can leave right now. I'm so sorry."

I was clearly worsening the situation by a) bringing attention to my discretion and b) repeating the offending word. He cast his full attention on his apple cider and I made my ungraceful exit to the bathroom. When I came out he was still there at the table, so I assume all was forgiven; thank goodness for small favors.

Just a word to the wise out there, you never know when the potty talk will strike.

Walk a mile in these eschews.

2006-10-29T08:58:00.000-08:00

My daughter insists upon spending a statistically significant portion of her day lounging around the entry to the catbox. She cannot be deterred; it's starting to worry me.

I'm betting the reason she loiters there is because my computer desk is right next to the 'kitty potty' and the reason for that is--well, I live in half a shoebox.

My husband's in the military, and contrary to popular belief he is incredibly underpaid for a mindblowingly stressful and lifethreatening job. Personally, I am of the opinion that someone who takes a hit for the country should get a little more than a purple dangly to pin on their chests--what say how about a million bucks? Even a ten dollar "I'm sorry for the shrapnel" gift would have been appreciated. In reality, however, we're living in half of a duplex in Texas, where everything is bigger including your electric bill. I thought I'd seen it bad in Arizona during the summer or the couple winters we lived in Colorado, but I was wrong. Over the summer we shared a modest house with some friends and our half of the electric bill was more than I ever paid living in a pretty big house in Arizona. Phooey. When we left that living situation, we found a tiny duplex in a tiny suburb-of-a-suburb and tried to think cool thoughts all through September. We were unsuccessful.

I'm considering eschewing all this blogospheric effort in favor of making one of those beg-a-thon websites, like the one that lady made where she snookered everyone else into paying off her credit card debt. Mine would be called IAMPATHETIC.COM and I would plaster it with .jpgs of those big-eyed children from the seventies. I would use covert guilt-mongering tactics to summon money from people's checking accounts, and then maybe I could afford to rent a whole shoebox...

...or maybe even a pair of Manolos.

Bathtime is not for the squeamish.

2006-10-27T09:26:00.000-07:00

Man, there is nothing like bathtime to make your kid have to pinch a loaf.

Today Uncle Nate is coming to town on business--well, not my town of course, because I live in hicksville and I doubt there's one single server in this whole county. What this means in the life of weaktoast is accomplishing nothing short of an improbable alignment of Sun, moon, my daughter, and my managing keeping her hair and clothes undishevelled between now and the time my husband gets home from work--no, between now and the time we get out of the car in Austin. Right now, faithful readers, as I write my very first blog, my daughter is in the bathtub. I am sitting beside her, eternally grateful for wireless internet access and my 9 month old laptop, not to mention inspiration.

Let me tell you something about mothering: I promise you're better at it than I am, even if you aren't anatomically fitted for the job. I've known moms (mine, for example) who have bragged about potty training their daughters in one day. One day, and at the age of two even. It took me a year and a half to potty train my kid, and let's just say we're not bowling a 300 in that lane yet.

In the course of this bath, she's gotten out three times to use the toilet. Keep in mind that she used it right before she initially climbed in, and you understand my surprise. Three times she's declared to me, loudly, "MOMMY I HAVE TO GO POOP!" This sort of announcement sets the gears in motion. I stand and lean first to the sink (where I have to put my dear laptoasty down) and then spin on my heel back to the bathtub to help her scramble out onto the ridiculously slick tile floor. I then pick her up--no small feat considering she's spread shampoo all over herself to "shave"--and plunk her down on the toilet. She makes ungodly faces, then proudly stands and looks into the toilet only to say:

"Awwwww, look! It's so cute. A baby poop and a mommy poop."

I shit you not.

Prescriptions for Life.

2006-10-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

Okay people, seriously.

I'm new to blogland. Really new--but I'm going to rock this shit, I promise.