Happy Birthday, Brother of Mine!

My dear little brother turns 30 today! Unbelievable. To celebrate, he's getting married. (You might remember when he proposed, back in September)

Obviously, the wedding is at the forefront of my family's collective world at the moment. Every nightmare I have involves something keeping me from attending, every conversation with a family member or friend makes some reference to the upcoming festivities. I had intended to be there already, but that's not the way my world worked out, so we're traveling overnight on Wednesday. With our toddler. Wish us luck!

My brother is under a little bit of pressure right now, obviously- he referred to himself as "Groomzilla" the other day... (prompting his best man to ask if he could instead be the "Best Mothra"). I tried to be very zen on the phone with yesterday, all calm and big sisterly. I said "You know, the thing about weddings is, they never turn out exactly how you expect, but it's all ok. Really, if your caterer didn't show up and we had to order pizza, it'd all be ok."

Did I expect him to buy that? I mean, it's true, but that doesn't mean he believes it. He pointed out that it might all be ok, once his bride stopped hysterically weeping. He does have a point there.

I must say, though, in the thick of things, on the actual wedding day, you reach a certain level of supernatural calm- at least that's how I felt. You know that by the end of the day, you'll be married, and isn't that really the point?

Our wedding was catered by my husband's godmother, at my house. (Which was about to become our house!) The food was unbelievably good, good enough that people stopped by the next day to eat more of it, but the story that features most prominently in the wedding tale has to do with what happened right before the ceremony.

I was in the bedroom, with my cousin and sister, who were frantically trying to help me comb out the super-tall country star hairdo I'd been given by a professional, when the caterer's daughter (our dear friend) came in. "Don't freak out," she said in a pretty laid back and cheerful tone, with a concerned smile, "but mom just dropped your cake on the floor."

I walked into the living room, where our sweet friend and caterer was staring at the wedding cake on the floor. "SHIT!" she was saying, "Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit." Then she saw me, smiled, and said "It's going to be FINE!"

I said "I know." and smiled back. Because I did know. And it was fine. We artfully positioned pansies all down the smooshed side of the cake. And because I'd scrubbed that floor on my hands and knees mere hours earlier, I didn't even feel bad about not telling the other guests. And at the end of the day, we were married.

And isn't that the whole point?

Conversation Overheard

Small is sitting at the table, holding a cup of milk, and a cup of apple juice, and I hear:

"Come on, cow milk, hold my hand!"

"No thank you, apple juice, I can do it."

Alrighty, then.

Wordless Wednesday

Inadequate Safety Measures

Small One was standing on a chair in the kitchen yesterday, watching me as I rifled through the junk drawer. She picked up a package of safety latches, and looked at it. It has a picture of a toddler on it, so she said "Oh, this is for babies!"

I nodded, distractedly, still looking for something, and she asked "What is it?"

I said "It's just something to keep babies from hurting themselves."

She looked at the package for a minute more.

Then she hit herself in the head with it, and frowned.

Clearly, that thing doesn't work AT ALL.

If a picture paints a thousand words...

...then why not paint your face?


...and the table, and the chairs, and...

Praise the Lord for washable markers!

(Sing with me, won't you? "She sees the dining room and wants to paint it black...")

Unexpected Postal Regulations

My thought is, they're routing people to the website out of necessity, now that only dogs can use the actual post office. I always suspected something like this was going to happen.

It's all relative, I suppose...

I dreamed last night that I drove my car into a rather large body of water. Some sort of bay. I was driving my Oldest somewhere, and realized I was taking this incredibly unprotected bridge too fast, and before I knew it, there was nothing I could do, we were going into the water.

I tried to hold on to the car with my legs as I swam to shore, and I thought I'd done it, but as I climbed out of the water I realized that what I'd been holding was a suitcase, and most of its contents had fallen out along the way. (Don't even get me started on what I believe this means about my psyche.) My husband came to help me, and subsequently was fired.

In my dream, all I could think about was my brother's wedding- how could we get to the wedding when we had no car and the Man had no job?

I woke up 1/2 hour late for work. So my first thought this morning was "SHIT! I'm late! But hey, at least my car isn't in the bottom of a bay."

Politely Tyrannical

We've been working on manners with our Small One. Just the basics, you know, please, thank you, no thank you. She's doing pretty well, I must say.

An unexpected downside, though, is how beautifully she incorporates manners into her natural two year old tyranny. "NO THANK YOU!!!!", she'll yell, as we put her into bed. Or try to get her to eat, or put her into her carseat, or whatever else she's protesting at that moment. We don't get the normal two year old "NO NO NO NO!" tantrum, we get a "NO THANK YOU NO THANK YOU NO THANK YOU!!!!!"

"I need a candy cane for dinner!" quickly changes to "May I PLEASE have a candy cane for dinner?" which then disintegrates into full fledged wailing "MAY I PLEASE..."

Well, you get the picture- never has a dictatorship been run with such good manners.

My favorite, though, was the other day when I was having a beer. She asked what I had, I told her it was a beer, and the following conversation ensued:

Small: "I need a beer."

Me: "No, my darling, you do not need a beer."

Small: "I need a beer in my MOUTH." (pointing)

Me: "Nope, beers are not for little girls."

Small: "May I PLEASE have a beer?"

Well... since you asked so NICELY...

The Finer Points of Pet Ownership

We have a dog. He's a cute little dog, the kind of dog you'd expect to see in a movie, trotting along beside his young owner down a dirt road, towards the old fishing hole. We suspect that he's a cross between a Jack Russell terrier and a Shih Tzu, leading us to smugly assert that we do indeed know Jack-Shih't.

This is our dog:



He was acquired back when Middle Child was this girl:



At the time, she was showing herself to be a very responsible young lady, babysitting, saving her money, making wise decisions in general. These days, not so much.


Middle Child has left the building, by the way. In the fall, she decided that there were greener pastures to be trodden over at her dad's house- I protested, and held out for quite awhile, but in the end she tortured me into letting her go. As she was preparing for the move, her brother asked her whether she intended to take the dog with her, and she gave him an emphatic NO. Dogs are too much trouble, too much work. (I could have told her that the same applies to teenaged girls, but I bit my tongue.)

Anyway, shortly after that conversation, she was grumbling about some dog related task she'd been asked to perform, and the Man asked her, "Do you remember when we GOT the dog, and you promised to be the best dog owner EVER, and always take care of him, and be responsible for him?"

She rolled her eyes, hard, and said, "I have taken that back SO MANY TIMES by now."

(Should I tell her there are no takesies backsies in pet ownership?)