I just Love...

I just love:

• My son Eddy Haskel when he comes home with an A on his spelling test or report card
• My daughter Baby Gnat when she wakes up in the morning and I am the first person she smiles at
• My husband, after working a shift all day and night on Saturdays and he brings home bagels and the paper on Sunday morning
• My dogs, when they perform the "Dog Circus" in my living-room
• My girl friends for providing me the shoulders and ears I need sometimes
• Merlot Wine, enough said
• Having a cleaner house, hard to come by these days
• Having almost all the laundry done
• 3:30 on weekdays
• Friday afternoons
• My Blog
  

Turd Herding

Yep, that is right, I am going to talk about poo! The other morning I sat baby Gnat in her bouncy seat on top of a cloth diaper while I quickly showered with the thoughts of quickly grabbing the babe as soon as I was finished and bringing her into the shower for a quick cleaning. I can hear her above the shower babbling and cooing, as I finish up with my cleaning I notice that the bathroom is very quiet. Too quiet, in fact. I am thinking maybe she fell asleep again or something has her really interested so she is not making any noise. Well, that something was poo, she pooed upon the cloth diaper upon which I had sat her, and was now enjoying the feel of the poo on her hands. Needless to say this was not and will not be my first experience with babies and poo.
Today I went turd herding in my own yard. Yeah I know it is 12 degrees, but alas this is the very best time to turd herd. We have 2 dogs who poop 2 times a day, and this quickly adds up. Before baby Gnat, I harvested dog poo once a week, the day before garbage day, I prided myself on the fact that when one wanted to walk barefoot in the yard, there would not be any turds to step upon. I grew up on a farm of sorts where my parents had many dogs, they were all kenneled in a very nice kennel system with its own sewer, but they still pooped in the large yard and I would always be the one to step in the poo. So when I became an adult and a responsible pet owner I vowed my yard would never be full of poo. Sadly, when the baby came more important things became my priority so the yard was taken care of whenever I was not too tired or whenever I thought of it, which was not too much. However today when I woke up and saw the beautiful blue sky, albeit cold outside, I told myself that I would make time for some therapeutic turd herding today. I have an undiagnosed or self diagnosed case of OCD, I love to fixate on things or tasks. Picking up cold turds is like a phreaky treasure hunt, I walk CSI style back and forth across the yard turd herding. I place the turds in a biodegradable trash bag which I purchase from our food coop, because I think if I am going to throw this into our landfill, that at least the bag can bio-degrade back into the earth.
I pick up the poo all seasons of the year but frozen turds are absolutely the best kind of turds to herd. In the summer it is warm but the poo is all sticky and smelly, in the spring and the fall turd herding can sometimes be prohibited by the rainy weather, wet turds are absolutely no fun. But, picking up frozen turds is the one of the most pleasant jobs I can think of, I often think if this teaching thing does not pan out I can always start my own turd herding business, called Princess Poo. I would clean yards for a living, and leave the bag for the customer to dispose of, and charge a minimum of $15.00 per yard.
Keeping my yard clean is a reward unto itself, but sometimes I get to see the unimaginable things that these dogs eat, like that one time last year where Callie got a hold of some magical reindeer food, you know oats and glitter that you sprinkle on the yard for the reindeer. Well that was some magical poo, it had the most beautiful red sparkle to it, and did you know that it takes several days for glitter to pass through the internal plumbing of a dog?
Well, I hope you all are keeping warm inside while Earthy Birthy Mama will be going back outside later to seek out some more frozen poo.

Strage World

I know this may sound phreaky weird to some people, but others will completely understand what I am about to admit. I sometimes use myspace to spy. I sometimes type in the name of a person whom I should not be looking for on myspace. I sometimes type in the name of an ex boyfriend or that one girl (who teased me in school, but whom I wanted to be my friend sooooo badly). I know I am not the only one who does this, and I am not a voyeur or anything weird like that, I just sometimes want to know what happened to so and so.

Well the other night I found out. I found this person through a myspace page that belonged to my friend, and it was a friend of her friend's page; and there he was plain as day holding a new baby boy. I just sat there thinking how strange this was. I am very happily married, but here I was feeling a twinge of longing for the good old days when nothing mattered but what you were doing for the weekend. Now it is not like that, these people that I spied on have lives too, they have sick family members, these people have babies, these people get married, these people are all grown up. I was just taken aback the other day when I saw that life went on without me and he really found someone special and they now have a family. So congratulations ex boyfriend your baby is a real cutie.

Ramblings

Can you believe that today our temperature reached the mid to upper 70's? I can't, I saw so many people in shorts it was totally crazy, even though it is warm, I am not wearing shorts nor am I letting Eddy Haskel wear shorts. Jeez this one girl I saw had on flip flops, a tank top, and really short shorts, come on I know the weather is strange, but it is January 7th for crying out loud. Tonight there is even a chance for tornado activity. I am a volunteer fire fighter and tonight we might possibly get called out if the weather gets bad, I however cannot got out because I am at home with our 2 kiddos, as today is a shift day for Earthy Birthy Papa.

Coincidentally I need to come up with a better name for him. So what shall we call him? When we talk about ourselves and how we even hooked up he tells me that I am NPR and he is NRA, I think this is very funny but true.

He totally hates it when he gets into the car and the radio is blasting Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Car Talk, just NPR in general. He loves FOX News and Fox Radio. We live near St. Louis and there is a FOX News radio station on the FM dial that he just loves, and he does not understand why I do not think it is wonderful. I being the liberal that I am, give money to our public radio station during pledge drive. I have had "drive-way moments" where I was unable to leave the car because of an interesting or thought provoking story on NPR. I also love NPR because I hate commercials. I not only pledge money for that reason but because I love public radio. I never thought I would grow up and listen to talk radio, let alone public radio. Public radio makes me think, public radio is adult talk after being with 3 and 4 year olds all day at work or even after being with my own kiddos. I would rather have NPR on than the television.

So yeah I am kinda nerdy, I still listen to music, I have an ipod and a car adapter to go with it, but most times when you get into a car or truck that I have recently driven, you will find the radio dial set on NPR.

How did we ever live without ...

I became a new mom again this past July, my oldest was born in 1998 and I cannot believe how much stuff I did not have with the first one and how much stuff I could not live without with the new one. With my oldest I had an old high chair circa 1977, I had an old play pen, you know it was 3 foot by 3 foot square and it was not the least bit portable, I had a Johnny Jump Up for the door frame, and I had a car seat. I eventually bought a jogging stroller. With this new one, I was lucky enough that someone let me borrow a swing, a Pack n Play, I have a bouncy seat, I have a new high chair, I have a new stroller, I have a new baby bed and I have a sling. I realize that my life circumstances were different back then, but how did I ever live without the bouncy seat, the swing and the sling?
These items described above, are not necessary, but I sure do like them. I can put the baby down in most any room, into one of the items described above, I do not have to juggle a baby and whatever else I am trying to do. Previously with the first born, I had to either put him down on the floor, or find a safe place within the room I was in to place him.
I often reflect on what our mothers and grandmothers did not have either. We are so lucky but how did they ever live without ...

For the Dogs

Oh how I wish I were a dog some days. Recently our dogs got some new toys, you know, the kind with the squeaker inside? My dogs love the toys even though the record amount of time any one of those toys has lasted has been a mere 23 minutes.

The dogs Callie and Abby, cannot wait to start tearing up the toys, Callie, a dog trained to be a service dog who did not pass the test and Abby, our smart mutt, enjoy tearing the stuffing out of the toys. They tear the stuffing out of the toys to get to the squeaker. Last night they were each given a new toy, they both immediately started in on their own toy, and low and behold there was stuffing all over my living room. As stuffing is relatively easy to clean up I asked Eddy Haskel to pick it up.
So now tonight I sit here and watch as these two dogs flip and flop these life-less toys around the living room. These toys that were once stuffed with stuffing and squeakers, are still seemingly the most enjoyable toys in the world. They act as if nothing better could ever happen. I enjoy watching them act this way, and wish I could be as excited about the life-less, stuffing-less, squeaker-less piece of toy that the dogs are guarding and obsessing on like it is gold. To be a dog!!

I really need to get a grip

So yesterday Papa Earthy Birthy was off of work so he was lucky enough to get to stay home with Eddy Haskel and Baby Gnat. I am secretly jealous of his work schedule, because he works 24 hours and then has 48 hours off of work. I leave for work and he and the two kiddos are still in bed a- snoozing. Yesterday was an exception because normally I have to get myself ready as well as Eddy Haskel, yesterday however he was off of school. The point of this post is the fact that I think Papa Earthy Birthy should get up with me in the morning, I think he should help me get out the door by making coffee and over-seeing the shower taking of said boy child. He argues that since I do not get up with him on the days when he goes to work, (waking up at 4:45am) that he should be left to sleep. Okay, granted on the weekends I really do not get up when he does, but during the week, yeah I am waking up when he does, I might not physically be out of bed but I could be, all he would have to do would be to ask. I have these grand dreams of actually getting up and doing Yoga as he is leaving, but alas I have not.
So I see his point of view that I should let him sleep, but why? Why do men need more sleep than women do? I get up with the baby, I feed the baby half asleep, I cook, I clean, I do more laundry than I ever thought I would. Why can he take naps and not feel guilty about it? When you are up, you are up, right?? Why do I think there are more important things to be doing, other than sleeping?
Like an old boss of mine said to me on a daily basis, many years ago "You can sleep when you're dead!"