Where do we go, now?

The Nashville Possibility, as I call it, is a lot closer than I thought. I figured we'd ponder it for about a year, and then move if we decided that's what we wanted to do. But apparently Jason's work would want him there by November 1 of this year, which is about FOUR MONTHS AWAY. So, yeah. Decision time. We spent some time on the internet looking at houses for sale in places like Antioch, Nolensville, Franklin, and Brentwood, or A Whole Bunch of Places I've Never Heard Of and Certainly Never Been To So How Can We Choose A House There? I mean, of course we'll visit and stay with Jason's mom, who lives in Hendersonville, to check out the city and the traffic and the stores and the mood, but still.

IT'S WEIRD. I've never lived anywhere besides Leeds and Birmingham, except for a sixth month stint in Montevallo which I now refer to as That Time I Was Stupid And It Cost A Lot Of Money, which is also another term for Every Day At The Agan House.

I digress.

Anyways, they haven't made Jason an official offer yet, but that really just means we don't know yet what position they want him to fill, or how much they'll pay him. He's had several higher-ups come up to him and start talking about Nashville, and then say, "You're going, right?"

FREAKIN' SCARY. It just is. But I feel compelled to push myself to do it, because really good opportunities like this one don't come around very often; this is the first time in my lifetime that I've had a real, viable chance to securely move away from here. So, it's onward and upward. More soon on This Thing That Might Be Good But Still Kind Of Makes Me Feel Like I Have To Poo.

Every one else is doing it; why can't we?

Yes, yes, yes.

So many gadgets, so little time. No, wait; MONEY. So little money.

Damn.

Antibiotics, decongestant, cough syrup, hyrdracortisone cream, mustard, and beech.

So Reed has the hand, foot, and mouth disease, and I have bronchitis. We are some sickly people, I have to tell you. I'm not even sure where the bronchitis came from, but I assume Reed's affliction came from the daycare. He has bumps all over his feet, legs, and hands, and some in his mouth like ulcers. The ones in his mouth hurt; he keeps crying and pointing at his mouth and saying, "Teeth!" We thought it was teething at first, but nope, it's a contagious disease. Jason noticed that he has some bumps on his feet and legs, so we're thinking he has it too. I'm just totally wiped out, and I can't breathe through my mouth or my nose, so I'm a tad bit whiny and ill-tempered.

The mustard essence that I've been using appears to work. All I know is that I added drops of it to my water all last week, and I didn't feel gloomy at all. On Saturday I decided not to use it because I was thinking maybe you're only supposed to use it WHILE you're gloomy. By Saturday evening I was totally heartbroken and weepy. I'm thoroughly aware that it would be coincidental or psychosematic, but really, who cares? I went back to the daily mustard, and Jason bought me some beech essence which is supposed to ease the intolerance one experiences during pms. But I've been thinking that I might use it all the time, not just during pms, because I'm pretty intolerant these days.

Reed is counting now, and it's very much like having a small, smart-assed French guy in the back seat of the car. "Uuuuuuu-EH! Doooooooo-EH! Reeeeeee-EH! Vooooooo-EH! Feeeeee-EH!" And after counting, or at the end of a song, or after he gives me a kiss, he congratulates himself with a very emphatic "YAAAAAAAAY!" while clapping his hands. We should all congratulate ourselves that often; life might be a lot more satisfying if we could say "YAAAAAAAY" and clap for ourselves after every task we accomplished.

Turn and face the change.

Another thing I did, I put on my old uniform, the one with the epaulets and funny lopsided hat. I always hated that fucking hat, it never fit me and always made my face look like it was on crooked. I put it on and rubbed the entire thing with peanut butter, hat, jacket, pants and all. I went to the garage and opened a forty pound bag of bird seed and doused myself liberally. I walked six blocks to the park, laid down, and waited.

This guy is an old friend of mine.

I'm sure I can catch Jason scratching his butt. He does that for about nine hours a day.

Beware, all ye who travel here.

My mom bought me a flip video for my birthday, so you're all about to experience some interesting stuff. So far I haven't had much of a chance to use it, but it's so small and convenient I'm sure that many a video of Jason tooting, me picking my nose, and Kristi musing about childhood dreams of carrot nipples are to follow.

Hey, potty training is coming soon for Reed; I'll bet a can capture his first toilet poo on film.

Today is my 28th birthday.

Honestly, birthdays have just never freaked me out. I was excited to turn 16 so I could drive. I was excited to turn 18 so I could totally be an adult and say "screw you" to my parents, which actually amounted to staying out late and arguing with my mom on the phone sometimes until two or three in the morning, when I would finally give up and go home. I was excited to turn 21 so I could finally find out what it was like to drink the alchohol.

Because I totally never drank before I turned 21.

Anyway, beyond that, ages have never really meant that much to me. Kristi turned 28 just a couple of weeks ago, and she jokingly said (I hope she was joking) that "we're approaching the age where we won't have anything else to look forward to." After Lindsey and I beat her about the neck and shoulders, she was like, "seriously, it's all downhill from here". Lindsey, whose 28th birthday is in about two weeks, has been saying that 28 is just one year closer to 29 and OH SHIT we're about to be 30 like, any minute now. For some reason it just doesn't bother me.

I mean, in a lot of ways, I still think of myself as, like, 20 or something. I still FEEL like a young person, and when I see old episodes of Friends when they're supposed to be 25 or 26, I still think of them as older than I am. But in a lot of ways it just doesn't occur to me whether I'm old or young or middle-aged or what.

Besides, when Jason turned 30 (which was, like, 20 years ago or something) we had an awesome party. We drank a lot of random stuff, like peppermint schnapps with hershey's syrup, and blew up pies with firecrackers. AWESOME, I said. If we can have a party like that, there's no way 30 will seem scary.

From a boy to man. A man with a purse.

Reed is really and truly an amazing human being. He's learning all these new words and phrases, and it's like having an alien riding around in the car or following me around the house.

First, the phone is officially the "mong-EE". When it rings, he starts saying "Mong-EE! Mong-EEE!!". He's very emphatic about it. It really cracks me up because I honestly can't see where this pronunciation came from.

Also, he is really very interested in purses. He loves my purse and his grandmommy's purse (grandmommy is now known as "maw", which just goes to show you we really ARE from Leeds), but he would also like to have his own purse. He found a VERY sparkly bedazzled purse at Cracker Barrel the other day and fell in love with it, and I have to tell you it was a battle to get it away from him and get out of the building. I finally found a little one that I bought a while back but never used and gave it to Reed. Whenever it's time to go anywhere, he says "Poose! Poose!" Once he finds his "poose", he hikes it over his shoulder and he's ready to go. I mean, really, once you have your poose and your mong-EE, you're set for the day.

He's also just started saying "I not know!" with so much inflection and sincerity. We ask him where is purse is, and he shrugs his shoulders and says, "I not know!" I sent a video of this to Lindsey and Kristi this morning, seeing as how they often not know either, so I figure they could relate.

Emma Grace.

A trick.
Originally uploaded by buffpuff

Yesterday our friends Amy and Dave had their baby, and we went to see them today. Emma is the prettiest little baby, a little Eskimo thing with chubby cheeks and a whole lot of dark hair. She slept for the first little while, but was smiling and making the funniest little faces in her sleep. Then she woke up and quietly opened her eyes. You've never seen a room full of adults oooing and ahing the way we all were.

I recently told Jason that I wish we could have more babies, and how I wish we could have a girl. Jason replied, "Do you REMEMBER your pregnancy?" And I do. I told him it's just that the good stuff overwhelms the bad stuff. Or maybe I just want a good excuse to lay on the couch for nine months. But whatever.

Tonight Reed decided he'd help me make supper.

As I stirred the pinto beans (what else?), he pulled the rest of the items we'd need out of the fridge- pina colada mix, A1 sauce, blackberry preserves, worcestershire, ranch dressing, red wine, and three cheddar cheese sticks.

Don't you wish you were eating at our house tonight?

Up yonder. In Isbelltown.

Up yonder.
Originally uploaded by buffpuff

I had to take a picture of this sign.

Recently I was talking about religion and Christianity specifically with a couple of people, and I was thinking how excited I would be to be sitting there in heaven when people started showing up. And, even, how excited I would be to get there and give a few people a knowing "I told you so" look, such as Kurt Cobain and John Lennon and Andy Thompson.

This may sound pretty presumptuous of me to assume that I'll go there, that I have some sort of golden ticket that guarantees my passage through the pearly gates, but I figure Jesus saves and my ass needs some saving right about now, expecially from an eighteen-month-old baby who has hit the terrible twos early seeing as how he's so advanced and mature and shit, which just means that he's already eating dirt and rocks and screaming when I force him, the mean bitch that I am, not to stick things into electrical sockets and eat dirt and pour as much bathwater as possible onto the floor.

Christina Aguilera could probably sing this better than I'll write it, but here it is anyhow.

Deanna, you little stinker.

I have a few things to say, the first of which is how proud of you I am. I ain't your momma or your daddy or anything like that, but I wonder how often you've been told that someone is proud of you. And I AM proud of you, so I feel like I should tell you.

I'm proud of you for jumping into the abyss even though it's scary. I'm proud of you for taking a chance, for doing something very risky, just because you can feel it in your gut that you just need to. Not all of us have that kind of strength.

I hope you find something really really fulfilling- a job where your boss appreciates the hell out of you, or a boy who doesn't want to involve you in polygamy. SHAUN.

Because I have known you for a while, and while we're not best friends, I just really like you. I think you're a sweet girl, and so much fun, and so sincere, and BEJEESUS CRIPES you're so pretty I can't believe that you're not surrounded by boys who worship you and want to take care of you and want to make you feel good. I have had moments in which I wished that I was as pretty as you or as much fun as you or as willing to kick a boy in the BALLS just because I can.

Don't ever stop kicking boys in the balls, Deanna, especially when they deserve it. SHAUN.

I don't know the boys you've dated very well, so I realize that I don't know the whole story and maybe I don't have the right to judge blah blah blah. I just know that you are vibrant in a way that I envy, and a boy who dates you should be SO thankful, and SO happy, and should be thinking of ways to make you smile and ways to make you feel special, not ways to fit just one more girl into his back seat.

I hope that we'll continue to be better friends than we ever have been, and I hope that I'll still get to hear about the ball-kicking goodness even though we don't work together any more.

Done.

I found my calling.
Originally uploaded by buffpuff

You now how I said yesterday that I'd like to own my own business?

This is for sale in Leeds.

It's a PORTABLE. MEXICAN. FOOD. STAND.

He drinks the pool water. But he also drinks his bath water, so I should have expected it.

Originally uploaded by buffpuff

Today was a good day.

These past few days have been better and worse at the same time.

Have you ever been yelled at and humiliated by a woman two-and-a-half times your age? In public? For doing something you were told to do? You really can't handle that much hotness, I can tell you from experience.

Last night we had many, many pina coladas and beers with Lindsey, Dave, Kristi, and Chris. I'm thinking that, in Chris and Dave, we may have found the ultimate pieces of this puzzle that is life. I really felt good, for the first time in a while, with all of us together.

Today Reed tested out his very first kiddie pool. He fanatically loves it, and I can see that many summer hours will be spent this way. Which is really, really good. We had fun.

Mason and Joy,

You two are infinitely lucky to have found each other; the two of you together are almost as lucky as Mason solely is to have found a woman who can deal with having a boy who takes longer to get ready than she does. You'd think a man with no hair could shit, shower, and shave in about twenty minutes rather than two hours.

But I digress.

You guys have a lot of good things in front of you, whether it's making your home together, learning every minute detail about the other, having children, cooking meals together, or whatever it is that you're most excited about. These things make daily life worth living. Remember every day that you are each special and perfect in your flaws and that you each make up half of a team that will best succeed if you always try to work together.

Now, for the part of this letter that falls into the "reality" category.

You are going to piss each other off SO BAD. There will be days that you would rather bash yourselves in the face with a large, wooden meat tenderizer than to speak to each other for another moment. This marriage stuff gets difficult and confusing and excruciating at times. What I hope is that you guys are able to persevere, able to remember why you felt like you couldn't live another day without being married to each other, able to remember all the little things about each other that make you smile.

And, really, I don't have any special, secret, married person advice for you guys that you couldn't figure out for yourselves or read in a fortune cookie. What I have learned is that every day is different, and sometimes it's hard to stay on the same page. There are days when I have thought "WHAT have I gotten myself into?", days when I've thought "HOW can one man eat so many bags of lime tortilla chips?', days when I've thought "If I can just bang my head up against this shovel ten or fifteen more times, maybe I can knock myself out." It is fun and exciting and scary and very, very hard to live with another person, especially when it's NOT a roommate situation in which you can just keep thinking, "At least this year will be over soon." It's FOREVER and ever and ever and ever, which means you don't have any easy outs. You have to work and work and work, and learn how to let things go quickly and thoroughly, how to balance out the other's flaws with your strengths, and how to let the other balance out your flaws with his strengths.

For a person who is totally obsessive and a bit of a control freak, a person such as oh I don't know MYSELF, it can be a confusing path to travel.

Mason, I've known you for a long time. One of my earliest memories of you is driving you to Jack's Quick Stop so you could buy me a pack of cigarettes. I was fifteen years old, and I had managed to talk my mom into letting me drive her car to your parents' apartment because they lived pretty close. I cruised through a stop sign on the way, and you said, "Buffy, be sure to always stop at that stop sign. Sometimes cops sit up there and pull people over for running it, and I don't want you to get into trouble." Because that's what you do- you take care of people. You think about other people and what you can do to help them. I'm lucky to know you, and I hope that we'll always be friends. I'm happy for you that you've found someone who makes you so happy and so secure and so unafraid to live your life the way that YOU want to.

Joy, I don't know you very well yet, but I hope that I'm going to get the opportunity to know you better. Mason has been happier and more carefree since he's been with you than I've heard him in a long time. If he loves you this much and is so sure of you, then I know you must be awesome.

I love you guys. Call me if y'all ever need someone to scrub your countertops with bleach.

Buffy

Breakfast.

Breakfast.
Originally uploaded by buffpuff

Today Reed had some Peeps for breakfast- white, marshmallowy sugar goodness with some green sugar goodness on top. He seriously LOVES the Peeps.

And, to think, I had the audacity to complain about Mary feeding Kane and Jude cotton candy for breakfast. The woman is a genius.

School's out for summer.

Today I spent the day in a building without air conditioning. In Alabama. At the end of May. In 85 degree weather.

I'm pretty bitchy when I get hot, so let's just say that I have been a PLEASURE to deal with on this day.

I've been thinking a lot about a whole lot of stuff that I'm not at liberty to speak of, on account of I don't want to get fired AGAIN for my blog. Which makes for very interesting reading for you guys. Hey, if any of you guys ever want to get together and listen to me complain about having to get out of bed every day, CALL ME.

Finally, today was the last day of school for Kane and Jude, also known as The Day We Get To Go To Mom's and Get Out From Under Buffy's Fascist Regime For A Whole Three Months, and let me tell you it couldn't get here soon enough. Kane has been spending most of his time on the internet, and Jude has been spending most of his time secretly giving me the finger. They're totally ready to escape to the land of dirt, candy, and all-night television. Jude spent the last few days trying to convince us that he shouldn't go to school today; he told us that the buses weren't running (they were), that they weren't serving lunch (they were), and that his teacher told him that he OUGHT to just stay home (THAT one I believe because the less kids the better, you know?). We decided that we really didn't mind if they didn't go today, but alas Jason and I both had to work, so there wasn't anyone to stay with them, including their mom who had other stuff to do today. And it DOES take some preparation to deal with these kids; Jude is in the midst of a full-on, middle child syndrome attack. His mom informed Jason that Jude has been trying to get presents by saying, "If you loved me, you'd buy this for me" and crying in the middle of the store, also known as The K-Fed method. She told Jason that the only thing that gets him to calm down is to say, "Am I going to have to call your dad?" We both agreed that the even better way to set him straight would be to say, "Am I going to have to call Buffy?" Trust me; THAT would scare the shit right out of him.

So we take the kids to the library pretty frequently to check out books and movies since it gives us all something to do and is free, since, you know, I refuse to spend money on the urchins. Usually the deal is Kane and Jude each get to pick one or two books and one movie each. Normally I wouldn't advocate putting a limit on reading material, but you have NO idea how often they lose stuff, and how often we subsequently pay for that stuff.

Yesterday we made one of those trips. Kane picked a book that is too easy for him and Jude picked a book that is too hard for him, so all was as usual. Kane picked a movie based on the computer game that came with it which he couldn't play because we have Macs and those games are always for PC.

Jude picked Aquamarine, a touching tale about three pre-teen girls, one of which is a mermaid. This CRACKED me UP to no end, but I didn't let Jude see that there was anything odd about it since I didn't want to damage his delicate sensibilities. On the way home when I asked what the hell that movie was about, Jude recited the whole story line with no trouble whatsoever. Something about the mermaid wants to be a regular person, so her dad Triton (!) tells her that she has to prove that true love exists in three days or he's going to flood the earth. CINEMA AT ITS FINEST, PEOPLE. He ended with, "It's REALLY good. We saw it when it came out in the theatre." I can't really explain it, but the picture in my head of Kane, Jude, and their mom sitting in a dark theatre totally riveted by this teenage angsty girly movie almost makes my eyes pop right out of my head from all the laughing.

We found out last week that this same guy, this same kid Jude, got into RLC. DUH.

I have some things I'd like to say.

Peter Petrelli, you are a SEXY BADASS with all that intensity, even if you do have the Stalone lip a little bit.

Claire, quit whining already. Seriously, that's enough.

Noah, you scare my balls right out of the sack, if you will, even if you are actually a good guy.

Hiro, run a comb over that muppet head!

Nathan Petrelli, you're dead, dude. Or are you?

Today I encountered a woman who told me that "Middle Eastern people always want something for nothing," and that the majority of them are "a problem".

Then she laughed and said, "I guess that makes me sound racist!"

I laughed and said, "There ain't no sound about it, lady; that makes you BE racist!"

Well, I didn't say it out loud, but I wanted to.

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

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Pimp Chalice Craft Night, and my new mantra.

"Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer."
-- W. C. Fields

Pimp Chalice Craft Night at the Bottletree was a total hit. We had a great time, made some awesome chalices, and drank some beers. Kristi finally had an occasion to which she could wear her mumu, and I finally had an occasion at which I could walk around and tell people what to do.

WAIT, woops! I do that every day.

We had an attendance of about eighteen people, which really is awesome because when the last two girls showed up it was difficult to find a place for them so sit and pimp. But we worked it out, thanks in no small part to Brock's begrudging willingness so seek out power strips and extension cords for us to use. Paint was slathered on, hot glue was gunned, and much bling found its destiny last night. My new chalice is even better than the first one. Jason photographed the whole thing, and I'm sure I'll nag him into uploading those soon, so be on the lookout.

Do you have anything to do with your tired ass tonight?

No?

You should come to Pimp Chalice Craft Night, and craft yourself a fine lookin' pimp chalice. It's at the Bottletree from 8 'til 10, and it's definitely going to be a good time.

Got some hoes to pimp but just don't have the right chalice for the job? Come see us. We can help.

The Green Wave.

Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

I went to my ten-year high school reunion on Saturday night.

No, that's not me in the picture; it's Ashley. But we're both complete idiots, so I think it's okay to let her represent this night and what it means to me.

I have to say that the actual reunion at Pine Tree Country Club was a little tense and quiet. Not bizarrly so, not totally uncomfortable, but just a little weird. About the time we left, I think everyone had JUST had enough to drink to loosen up a little bit.

Kristi and I had already planned to go karaoke at the Upper Deck in Homewood or I'm really sure we would have gone with our old friend Kelly to the Yacht Club, a place that she kept referring to as "alternative". When she explained what that meant to a group of the boys we graduated with, they pointed at me and said, "We're going to HER bar."

I thought it was a funny joke until we arrived at the Upper Deck to find several tables pushed together at which were about half of the people who attended the class reunion. A TOTAL SURPRISE. And a pleasant one, at that.

The night proceeded to be COMPLETELY BIZARRE. It was like being back in high school, except without the discomfort and self-hatred. It was like the reason that high school reunions are invented- I got a chance to totally and completely just be friends with a lot of people I missed out on in high school. It was nice.

And, hey, Ashley made that face up there. And Beau shook his ass like a stripper. And Matt actually stripped a little. It must have been good.

No thanks.

So John Fucking Tesh was doing this really titillating segment earlier on married couples and the 437 things that you should never do because if you do them it will kill your marriage.

Don't ever play the victim. Don't ever put your own needs before your spouse's. Don't use too much "me" talk. Don't ever talk badly about your spouse to your friends or family.

I was pretty skeptical throughout most of it, but when he got to that last one I immediately thought, "Okay, this guy has OBVIOUSLY never been married, and if he has it's probably to some bow head who desperately wants to sign a petition in support of Paris Hilton.

Good answer.

A couple of weeks ago, Jason had a long talk with Kane and Jude and told them that he wanted them to clean their room, to really clean it, throw out broken toys and old homework, put everything in its place. I honestly didn't think it would happen, but that night they totally overhauled their room, and threw away three garbage bags full of stuff.

The next evening I noticed something odd in the bathroom garbage can. Upon further inspection I found that it was a pair of Jude's underwear. The underwear was perfectly intact, and really didn't even look dirty. I pulled them out and went to Jude and said, "Why did you throw away a pair of underwear?"

He looked at me blankly for a moment, and then he got his "I'm really thinking very hard" look, and said, "Uuuuuuum, I've slept since then, so I really don't know."

I don't need Thomas Dolby; I blind myself with science.

Oh, holy shit. I just realized that I forgot to mention the VERY BEST PART about Josh's graduation party Saturday night. Was it when Lindsey threw his cake in the back yard? No. Was it the fact that Josh graduated from college with his double major in I'm Smarter Than You and I Might As Well Go Ahead and Sign Up To Be a Professor? Of course not.

The best part was when we were all sitting outside, smoking cigarettes and drinking beers, playing guitar and having a sing-along, and I decided that I had to go to the bathroom so, in front of five or ten of my good friends and five or ten people from out of town I'd never met before, at about 9:30, very shortly after we'd arrived, before I even finished my first beer, I got up and WALKED INTO THE CLOSED SCREEN DOOR.

It was AWESOME.

Seriously, the last time I did that was when I was eight years old, and I wast at my aunt CJ's condo in Pensacola, Florida. Instead of walking into the SCREEN door, I RAN into the closed GLASS sliding door, and it was not only emotionally painful but physically painful to boot.

This time, nearly twenty years later, I was mortified for about three seconds. Then I realized, hey, this way they automatically know not to speak in long sentences or use big words when they talk to me, but to speak slowly in short sentences and nod and smile a lot, and maybe I'd just leave them alone.

The funny part was that immediately after I did it, I stood perfectly still thinking that maybe, just maybe, no one had even seen it. The sudden rising chorus of "Hell yeah!" and "Damn, Buffy" and "Look out!" and "Woah, good job!" alerted me to fact that, yes, every single person on the patio had seen it. When murders and rapes occur, there are often no witnesses at all, but when I walk like an idiot straight into a screen door, there are twenty. TWENTY.

And, you know, it makes sense, because the door was right behind where Josh was sitting, playing the guitar, and everyone else was sitting or standing so that they could watch and listen to him play. So it was like that time I stumbled onto the stage at a Green Day show and did a line off Billy Joe's ass expecting no one to see- it just wasn't logical.

By the way...

I've had a couple of thoughts. I do think, every now and then. Just not that often.

I think it's nice that people stop by here pretty often to say nice things, to say "how funny" or "good job" or "don't worry", or if you're Jason, The One Who Comments, something like "I don't actually think that's correct" or "nuh-UH!". I love it. LOVE IT. I encourage it completely and if I had just a little more money I'd give everyone who commented a dollar and a large sweet tea with each comment.

No matter how nice it is to hear nice things, I still really like hearing the not so nice things, the "you can't do math" and the "you need help" and the "WHATEVS LOL BEOTCH ROFLZ". Really I love to know that people are reading. Loving my ass like God taught you is not required. I love for people to disagree. LOVE IT.

What is funny to me is the fact that almost every single person who ever has something nice or funny to say signs it, either with their actual name or their nickname if I know them, or a link to their blog if I don't. Yet, a large majority of the people who are just dying to say something ugly are anonymous. It's funny how brave and bold you can be sitting behind a dark curtain. How bold is it, really, to say what you think if you're afraid to own up to it?

I assume that, if anyone reads this and just REALLY HAS to disagree with me or try to explain why they wouldn't want to put their name on a comment, they'll say things like "I don't want my name out there on the internet" or "I don't feel the need to attempt to glorify myself or show off by putting my name on it" or "I just didn't have the time, after the 45 minutes it took me to hunt and peck out 'UR A BICH', to find the letters to my name". But I just don't really buy it. I think it's odd that people would take the time to say these things that they wouldn't own up to.

Just a thought.

Jason, you're The One Who Is About To Have A PhD In Psychology. What do you think about it?

Cinco de Mayos and graduations and how your vagina can get you into trouble.

Oh, yes.
Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

We went to Josh's graduation party last night, and it was a good time. Jason let his hair down, I pulled mine up, and then we humped each other on the dance floor also known as Dave's living room. NICE.

I know someone who had an abnormal pap smear and has to have her cervix biopsied. Scary stuff; if it were me, I'd be freaking out. She's really worried that it's an awful procedure, really painful and whatnot. I imagine that it's easier to worry about that than to sit and think about the outcome. I mean, I KNOW that everything will be fine. Jesus and I have already talked about it. But if I was in that situation I probably wouldn't feel so sure of myself.

I know someone else who has spent a lot of time telling herself that things will get better, and trying to have faith in someone who continues to let her down. I know that feeling- how that little fluttery thing that happens in your stomach can make you put up with large amounts of intense pain in your head and heart. I just hope that things get better, way better, from here on out, no matter what "better" turns out to be.

I hope that both of these girls know that I'll be there if they need me, through thick or thin, all the way to the outcome and on to the other side of it.

Our wedding.

Our wedding, Jason's and mine, was the best day ever, second only to the day Reed was born. They were both happy days- the wedding day was just a lot less bloody and physically painful, and instead of bringing life into the world we collectively killed millions and millions of brain cells with shots, shooters, and beers. And martinis. And wine. MILLIONS AND MILLIONS.

The day started slowly, as we had the bright idea the day before to share a PITCHER of frozen margaritas. At Moe's. And people, you know how I love the Moe's, but I have never again since that day had the margaritas there. They use shitty tequila there, and it will come back on you tenfold, even if it IS the happiest day of your life. Because Montezuma, he doesn't give a fuck about your wedding.

Once Jason finally dragged me out of bed around 11:00 a.m. we showered and pretty much went our separate ways. Jason picked Kane and Jude up and dropped them off with his mom, except Jude threw a fit to go with Jason so they went together to my mom's house where he finished the groom's cake, and then he went to the hotel where his parents were staying to get dressed and ready. I showered and headed to my mom's house, where we were getting married, to do my make-up and finish with the last of the decorations and get dressed.

My aunt CJ was there, and I was telling her about the awful cramping and diarhea, and she was like, "OOO, that's the cold feet!" And I was like, "NO, that's the shitty tequila! My God! I wish I'd never had a margarita ever!" I've learned not to say things like "God, I'll never drink again." Because, really, no one likes a liar.

The ceremony started around 5:30 with just our immediate families in attendance, and my dad walked me down the long hallway to the living room. Jason and I were married in front of the fire place by an old family friend named Lindy Martin. It was lovely and short and sweet and Jason teared up when he said his vows, probably because he's said them once before and he couldn't figure out how he'd gotten roped into this again.

By 6:00 p.m. people started to show up for the reception, the food was put on the tables- jambalaya and red beans and rice and hummus and tabouli and cakes and cookies and cheese and crackers. The alcohol started to flow and pretty soon the house was packed- my boss and coworkers, our families and friends, cousins of mine I hadn't seen in years, aunts and cousins of Jason's who I'd never met before, and some I'd met the one and only time at his grandmother's funeral, a story that is painfully funny or at least painful that I will tell another time. I managed to spill apple martini down the front of my dress OVER AND OVER throughout the evening.

Jason and I handed out hugs and accepted hugs and laughed and talked and drank and had a really good time. It was a really beautiful evening.

Off the subject, do you feel the need to be disturbed? Do you? Here you go.

This thing called happy.

Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

This life, this one right here, has calmed down for a few minutes. I mean I know I'm jinxing it, but it has been, like, twenty minutes without a "now what?", and I'm getting a little used to it.

Shit.

I was out taking pictures this morning, and I found a horse shoe at Lake Purdy. I picked it up because I thought maybe it's lucky. My mom said, "Sure it's lucky!" and Jason said that since it actually came off a horse- it still has the nails in it and everything- that makes it more lucky.

Also, I've lost twelve pounds since March 13.

Now, tonight we have to do some kind of experiment with dry ice and balloons for Kane's science fair, so if you're sitting there thinking how you hate me and my life shouldn't be this good, don't worry. Things change.

On earth, as it is in Heaven. Especially that "Thou shalt not be any pissy babies" part.

So I was right; it's the strep throat, complete with fever, fatigue, and grumpiness. My doctor was all, "101 degree fever? Why are you doing that?" I was not amused.

I'm just hoping that Reed won't catch it, seeing as how he's already going through his "If Moms Can Die From Frustration, I Can Take Care of That For Ya" phase. Reed is bringing cracker back in more ways than one, and I'm getting a little frazzled. He contstantly wants to be doing whatever he's not doing. Pick him up; put him down. Give him juice; give him crackers. Go, go, go in the car; go, go, go outside; go, go, go in the house. Play with his toys; see what he can do with a sharp knife and an electrical outlet or maybe a toaster if he's feeling nutty. I'm telling you, it's enough to make a person love the Lord if only because loving the Lord might get you into heaven and in heaven there are NO PISSY BABIES.

Blistery goodness.

So I can feel the strep throat coming on. It's MARVELOUS. Jude had strep throat about two weeks ago, and I honestly thought the rest of us had avoided it. Reed is currently still on antibiotics for his nasty cough and runny nose, so I don't really have any idea if he CAN catch it. But I'm pretty sure I'm getting it. My throat felt weird and scratchy on the way home from work on Friday, and when I looked at it there were two gross blistery spots on the back. SEXY. I felt better yesterday, but today I feel really really awful, tired and achy and low and confused, and my throat is hurting really bad. I suppose it's back to the doctor with me tomorrow.

Off the subject, I'd just like to get off my chest that Jason and I both, at our respective jobs, work around some of the most stuck-up, intolerable yuppy fuckheads that I've ever encountered in my entire life. EVER. Fire me, I don't care, because it's enough to drive a person to drink large amounts of alcohol and randomly shout "FUCKERS!" I think it's starting to get to me a little bit.

Lastly, Jason and I got a sympathy card in the mail regarding Shu Shu's passing, and it was the sweetest thing. It really was.

Baby Ruth?

Baby Ruth?
Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

Oh, I definitely have stuff to do. STUFF. TO. DO.

I got a hair cut today in preparation for my ten year high school reunion.

You can go ahead and bludgeon me in the face at any time.

Honestly, it's not a matter of being nervous or scared or uncomfortable; I've seen a lot of the people who will be there pretty recently. It's more just a matter of the OCCASION. I wonder if we're all going to be standing around going, "SO... What have you been up to?...... Mmm. Cool." I intend to dance and drink and eat and hopefully try and look pretty.

Incidentally when I was being shampooed at the salon today, the shampoo lady looked at my long-ass hair and said, "You're getting this cut? Are you doing Locks of Love?" I laughed, and was like, "No, just a trim. I'm not a generous person."

This is the way.

So the Pussycat Dolls officially have a new member, a girl young and energetic enough to bring the other 27 members of the Pussycat Dolls their hot water bottles and fiber pills after thrusting and humping violently for hours at a time.

In other news, we've been doing some gardening around here and it's good for the soul. We've let life get in the way of keeping up with the out of doors. I went to the store and bought a hydrangea, some creeping jennies, and a few other pretty things and we're working on getting things up to code. I'm excited about having a pretty yard when we get done.

Reed is back to normal momentarily. He's finishing up another round of antibiotics after a nasty cough made things unbearable for every living thing within a three mile radius, and- for the moment- we're all sleeping all night long and waking up happy.

And, in the most interesting news of the evening, Jason was just now apparently doing his "Pussycat Dolls dance" over in the corner just for me, and I didn't even notice.

I'll be talking him into doing it again in nothing but flip flops and a thong later.

Oh yes, that's right.

Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

We saw Wolfmother last night at Workplay, and it was one of the most impressive rock shows that I've ever seen. Those guys have so much charisma, like out to HERE, so much that you have to stand back and brace yourself in order to take it in. I really was pleasantly surprised, because I don't know that much of them. Jason really loves them so I was just along for the ride, and I'm so glad that I was because it was SWEET. And now I have a crush because that lead singer, that one with the tight jeans and the afro, he says "BIRmingham." You know, BIRmingham, with the emphasis on the BIR. Folks from Birmingham, Alabama say "BirmingHAM", with the emphasis on the HAM, because ham is just so good that the emphasis always ought to be there, on the ham. Apparently Australians are more concerned with the bir than the ham, which is probably how he can fit in to those TIGHTEST JEANS THEY HAVE.

HOT.

My only complaint is that the whole show was so damn energetic, so non-stop, and then at the end they suddenly went into this too-long, when-is-this-going-to-end, I'm-asleep-with-my-eyes-open experimental jam-type thing, and it just didn't fit. I mean, every one there is pumped, drinking tons of beers, dancing all over the place, sweating and loving it, and then all of the sudden the whole thing screeches to halt and they just slowly sway about the stage, teetering about playing random notes and feedback and whatnot. We made it through about twenty minutes of that before I figured that midnight was a smart time to go home, what with the working and the baby who cares not about my sleep.

But all-in-all, a great experience, a great band, no ass whatsoever to fill those TIGHTTIGHT jeans but still a sexy motherfucker.

Speaking of, one of the highlights of the night was when I leaned over to Lindsey and said, "Man, that guy has no ass whatsoever." She replied, "Have you SEEN Jason's ass?"

Mish-mash.

Well, today my cat is still dead and buried in the back yard, and our plumbing still isn't fixed and the plumber still hasn't come back to figure out why it's not fixed even though I first called them last Thursday to let them know things weren't kosher.

LIFE IS GOOD! PARTY!!!

The owner of the plumbing company that did this most expensive work came over today to discuss the work, the price, and the fact that things still aren't perfect and, I gotta tell ya, he's a LOUD TALKER and a CLOSETALKER. Those two things together equal a very odd conversation, a conversation in which he claimed that Jason said, "As long as it doesn't go over $8000, we'll pay it.", a conversation in which he asked me what church we go to, a conversation in which he kept talking about charging us $4000 in a way that I could tell he meant that he had never tried to charge us $7000. IT WAS TENSE. He eventually said that he was "prepared" to only charge us $1500 instead of the $3000 that we owed (he had held on to the check for $3000 since Jason told him that we didn't have that much in the bank), and that his "guy" would come back later in the afternoon to figure out why the shower still isn't draining.

We still don't have a bill or an invoice for the work, and his "guy" never came back to fix our shit.

This situation is steadily getting more frustrating and more complicated, and I don't really DO complicated, you know? I like beer. I like cheese. I like having beer and cheese with my friends on the front porch.

Maybe I just need to have some beer and cheese on the front porch with these plumbers and try to work it out that way.

My Shu Shu.

Well, our Shu Shu kitty got run over tonight and died. She was a really good kitty.

Then I watched The Color Purple, so I'm in a pretty sorry state right now.

Shu Shu was a really good kitty. She liked sitting on Jason's shoulders. She really loved Reed. She refused to eat table scraps of any kind, or wet cat food. She shit on Kane and Jude's bed a couple of times when we still lived in our apartments.

Tonight, right after she got hit, I was trying to get Reed ready for bed whilst weeping loudly, and he suddenly started saying "Shu Shu! Shuuuu Shuuuu!" I really almost threw up, and I wept a little louder.

So now I don't know who Ida's going to play with. I don't know what to say to Reed when he starts saying her name. And I can't quite wipe the image of her little dead eyes from my mind, the last image I saw of Shu Shu, right after the girl knocked on our door and said, "Do you guys have a cat?" And I just can't stop thinking how her bowl was empty, how she might have been hungry. And how she slept with us last night for the first time in a long time.

I KNOW THAT THIS IS SO VERY DRAMATIC. I'm just not good at this stuff. I can't deal, okay? Cut me some slack. Slack is not something that we get over here very often, with all the plumbing issues and car wrecks and the getting fired and old friends dying and the throwing up and snotting and bills in collections and the whole NOT BEING ABLE TO DEAL stuff. Really, I'm working on it. I'm trying to remind myself that this stuff happens and in my life time a lot of kitties have gotten run over or died or been given away, and I did a good thing by telling that tearful girl that it was okay, that I knew it wasn't her fault.

But my kitty is dead and she's buried in the back yard and I'm just really not cut out for this stuff.

Pimp chalice craft night.

Pimp chalice craft night.
Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

Last night we made ourselves some pimp chalices. And it was good. It's amazing what you can do with a little gold paint and some rhinestones.

Next weekend, we drink from our pimp chalices. We never quite made it that far last night. But we did listen to some Dr. Dre, drink Natural Light, and craft it up.

Also...

Hindsight, after all, is caused by a lack of foresight. Civilization woozed out of the Nile about 300,000 years ago. The Nile was a river that had some water in it. Every year it would flood and irritate the land. Mesapatamia was squigged in a valley near the Eucaliptus river. Flooding was erotic. Judyism was the first monolithic religion. Old Testament profits include Moses, Amy, and Confucius, who believed in Fidel Piety. Moses was told by Jesus Christ to lead the people out of Egypt into the Sahara Desert. The Book of Exodus describes this trip and the amazing things that happened on it, including the Ten Commandments, various special effects, and the building of the Suez Canal. David was a fictional character in the Bible who faught with Gilgamesh while wearing a sting. He pleased the people with his many erections and saved them from attacks by the Philipines.

You should really check this out. Thanks, April.

Yes I did.

Yes I did.
Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

Creativity is sho 'nuff therapeutic. Yes it is.

MOTHERBITCH.

OOO! So today, we had about $7000 worth of poopy fun! Except that poop isn't really that much fun, and neither is spending $7000 on about four hours worth of work.

By the way, next week I'm becoming a plumber.

It turns out a pipe burst in our back yard underneath the ground, and they had to bring in a tractor or a back hoe or some shit, dig up the back yard, and replace the pipes. We have a home warranty but this wasn't covered because the problem wasn't IN the fucking house, which I'm sort of divided about because normally I would say "just so long as there's no shit in my house." But today if the shit had been in my house I could have saved $7000 so I think I would make the trade-off.

After Jason told the guy repeatedly that we literally don't have seven-fucking-thousand dollars to pay him, he finally knocked it down to $4000 because he's such a stand-up fellow, so we gave him $1000 and a check that's going to bounce like Beonce's ass if we get turned down for a loan tomorrow, which we probably will.

So, you know, party! Tonight we drink. Tomorrow we start looking for cardboard boxes that are big enough to hold two adults, three children, two cats and a goat.

I poop; you poop; we all poop!

You know, sometimes things get pretty boring around here..

Luckily, right now as I type this, there is a puddle of poo and other assorted items of sewage in our back yard. IT JUST GOT INTERESTING.

For about the last two weeks I had noticed that, besides the fact that the shower was draining REALLY slowly, there were just odd things happening with out plumbing. Often times for no particular reason I can hear what sounds like water draining in the tub, and I can hear bubbles coming up in both of the toilets.

Now there's poop in our back yard- probably our own poop. But I guess there's no guaranteeing that since we're on the city sewer, not a septic tank. It's too bad that we don't live close to any famous people; we could have famous poop in the back yard. I could be selling Leonardo DiCaprio's poop on eBay right now.

But, really, if I had immediate access to Leo's poop, why would I SELL it? It would live in a jar on our mantle above the fireplace, where all good famous poop lives.

This is the way we grow our childrens.

Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

Yes, that's right; my child wears bunny ears.

He hunted Easter eggs for the first time yesterday, and it was really one of the most fun, inspiring, joyous days that I've experienced in a long time. Regardless of how dramatic it may sound, watching him grow and develop is mind-boggling and heart-breaking and awe-inspiring all wrapped up into one big mess of emotions. HE HUNTED EGGS! He sought them out and put them in a basket and showed us how many he had. OH MY GOD I'M GOING TO BE THE MOTHER OF A TEEN-AGER ONE OF THESE DAYS.

And today he didn't cry when I took him to daycare. HE DIDN'T CRY OR PROTEST OR CLUTCH ME AND SCREAM. It is monumental and wonderful and I felt so FUCKING RELIEVED and a little bit hurt, but that's just my crazy showing itself a little. Some tiny part of me wants him to never want to be with anyone but me, but hey, all the boys can't act just like Brad Pitt. HE always cries when I drop him back off with Mama Angelina. That whole marriage thing is a cover-up, by the way.

Work, and life, and parenthood, and life and work and being a mama, it gets right up on top of me sometimes. I was driving home from work the other evening and I suddenly had this realization that I DON'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT. And I'm not perfect at all. And even though I am so far from perfect, I am a fantastic mother because some days all I can think about is how to make things the best they can possibly be for Reed and Kane and Jude. And I'm striving all the time to be a fantastic wife, and even thought I'm not ALWAYS a fantastic wife I try so hard and I apologize A LOT, people. And things- you know, life- have felt really good for a surprising amount of time, and it's only partly because of all the heroin and vodka, so I'm making progress.

Really the only area that I'm not progressing in is italicizing. When I use Blogger on my Mac, there isn't a button for italicizing, so I'm doing all this FUCKING capitalization, because it's the only other option for EMPHASIS and INTONATION.

HELP ME PLEASE.

Qui gives a shit?

Things are temporarily fairly normal here at the Agan household. I AM RELISHING IT WHILST I'M ABLE, PEOPLE (mm, relish).

I would like to say that I was pleasantly impressed and entertained by The Departed. I knew that I'd like it, but I didn't really think that I'd FANATICALLY LOVE IT the way that I'm doing. I have to say HONESTLY that it had me sitting on the edge of my seat, tapping my foot through the whole movie. TRUTHFULLY, though, I didn't buy the psychiatrist character; there was something that just didn't play out for me. Because honesty and truth are not synonymous.

I have to say, that concept had never really occurred to me before- I know plenty of you are just gearing up gleefully to type "OH MY SHIT YOU NEVER KNEW THAT?" But come on, I can't be a fucking genius on every single idea ever, people. I know whores and cocaine, okay? Those're my forte. Honesty and truth? I know not these things.

I was thoroughly intrigued, so I took to the internet- that's where all honesty and truth reside, right? I also took a quick look into my 1997 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, which had this to say about the word honest: 1 : free from deception : truthful; also: genuine, real 2 : reputable 3 : creditable 4 : marked by integrity. It listed the synonyms upright, just, conscientious, honorable. The definition of truth (in 1997) is: 1 : truthfulness, honesty 2 : the real state of things: fact 3 : the body of real events or facts: actuality, and it lists the synonyms veracity and verity.

I went ahead and looked up integrity as well, as it was used in the definition of honesty: 1 : adherence to a code of values: incorruptibility 2 : soundess 3 : completeness.

You may all be asleep by this point, but I find the subtle difference to be fascinating. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to have more to say about this later, but for now, what do you think? Does it boil down to whether you're more concerned about the outcome or the actual fact? Does that simplify it too much? Should folks holdin' philosophy degrees just shut the fuck up and go to bed already?

Sometimes the Pepto just comes back up with the rest of it, so what's the point?

Mm, nacho vomit. So pleasurable.

So it turned out I caught Reed's stomach virus from him. I started the puking Monday night and continued on into Tuesday morning, and then came the aching and fever. It was SEXY, and Jason can confirm that as he was trying to sleep about ten feet away from the bathroom in which the magic was happening. And it really was magic, I tell you. It never ceases to amaze me how one can eat this one portion of food, then about eight times that much can come back out again. VOILA!

The worst part was that something odd happened to my left hip at some point so that every time I heaved, it felt like it was dislocating. So much fun.

So far, Jason, Kane and Jude haven't caught it. I spent today washing clothes and towels and sheets and Cloroxing every surface in the house including my own ass. Hey, it needs disinfecting sometimes too.

Getting puked on is SO rock and roll.

So now Reed has the stomach virus. There is nothing better than reaching out to stroke your lovely baby's face, and pulling it back covered in purple vomit. NOTHING.

He puked half the night Saturday and half the morning Sunday, then he was fine all afternoon yesterday. This morning I noticed that he seemed a little warm, but I thought that it was my imagination. After my shower I noticed that he just looked puny, so I took his temperature with the fancy ear thermometer that we bought last time he was sick (you know, 47 minutes ago). It said 101.4 in one ear, and 103.5 in the other- that thing was SO worth the $35 we spent on it. Then while I was drying my hair he puked blueberry-colored vomit all over our bed, as he had a blueberry cereal bar for breakfast. Most of the puke went on Jason's pillow, so it's okay. He's not the one who gargles Clorox at the mention of a sour stomach, right?

So now I'm just hoping that it's passed, and that tomorrow he'll be well. The nurse at his doctor's office said "Oh there's no reason to bring him in!" I'm pretty sure that she's been lobotomized and nailed to a stool where she sits and answers the phone and just says, "Oh there's no reason to bring him in!" over and over all day long. It's a wonder those people ever have patients in the office.

Book 'em, Danno.

So I heard John Fucking Tesh on the radio the other day saying, "You know, buddy, employers check Myspace and stuff when they hire you, so if you have anything BAD on your Myspace or on your blog you should erase it!" I though, "MHMM. Maybe I ought to think about erasing all that stuff about my cocaine use." And I also thought, "Fonk dat." I mean, you know, ahyamwhatahyam. You know?

We went to Nick's graduation from police academy today, and it was fun and interesting and comical and stuff. This one speaker was talking about how he got to "teach" George W. Bush how to yell "War Eagle" when he spoke in Auburn, and I thought, "Now if someone will just teach him how to speak English, he'll be on the road to being an actual human being." But I digress.

It was a lovely day, and I'm so proud of Nick. He looked all handsome and stuff in his uniform, and my sister-in-law Cassie looked so proud and excited. Their son Connor who does not have turrets syndrome but likes to show us how he COULD, in theory, have turrets syndrom had a GREAT time at Ruby Tuesday ("Reed is a baaaaa-by! Reed is a baaaa-by! Ya, ya, weee, weee, eh! I just went and pooped!").

It was a nice afternoon with the fam. And MAN, I have NEVER been in a room with that many loaded fire arms and sets of hand cuffs in my whole life. I can only hope and assume that Nick and Cassie are having some good ol' policeman fun at their house tonight.

If there is no other good reason to go to New Orleans, you should at least go for those largest beers they have.

Okay. OKAY. I've had two forties. Eighty ounces of beer. Yes.

Tomorrow Jason's brother graduates from police academy, making him officially A NARC. I joke. I'm very proud of him. SOMEBODY in our family ought to make good. I'm busy trying to figure out how I can fall down realistically and then sue, so you know. Plus, if Kristi is a lawyer and Nick is a cop and Lindsey works in news media, we're covered on all bases, right?

On reasons to get a Sam's card already.

So we're still in the process of getting back to normal over here. My mom took Reed to the doctor Friday, where they finally FOR THE LOVE OF GOD gave him some antibiotics and a prescription decongestant and expectorant for his nasty cough and snotty nose that he's had for at least a couple of weeks now. He really hasn't ever completely stopped being sick since he got the roseola. It's been a rough few weeks, especially with starting daycare right in the midst of all of it.

Daycare is going fairly well. Some days Reed starts crying when I head for the door in the morning once he realizes where we're going. Those days are very hard. It's indescribably difficult to drag my child, convulsing and screaming, out the door, force him into his car seat, drag him in to the daycare, attempt to pass off his limp, angry body to his teacher, and then just leave him. Kids really know how to work it, too. He reaches his little hands out towards me and cries and cries, and says "Mama!" frantically over and over. I rip myself away, run to the car, and take four or five qualudes to take the edge off. Some days I use water to swallow them, and some days I use gin. It varies. One day last week it was bad enough that, on my lunch break from work, I literally sat in Moe's with Jason and cried. I sat in the middle of the lunch rush at MOE'S, people, and cried in front of everyone through the entire meal, unable to taste my food. When something fucks with my ability to enjoy Moe's, IT IS VERY FUCKING SERIOUS.

On the upside, Reed has inherited his father's ability to sit down and eat an entire bag of tortilla chips. This is annoying to no end because I'm the kind of person who buys things in the grocery store thinking, "Hey, these will be good!" Then I don't necessarily eat them the moment I get home. I'll buy the tortilla chips, for example, and then within 47 seconds of getting them home, Reed and Jason will consume the whole bag, knawing off some of their own fingers in the process. Then two days later I'll think, "I'm going to make myself some tasty nachos!" I'll be doing my happy food dance, excited about the Mexican goodness, when I'll discover the empty, sad little bag in the garbage, and I curse the gods of Fine Sexy Redheads and Genius Perfect Almost Intolerable Smart-Assed Babies for sending those two to my care.

This is made of beer?

Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

What can I say about our trip to New Orleans this weekend?

It was bizarre to see x's spray-painted on the fronts of entire rows and rows of houses. It was sad to see the word "help" on the rooves of buildings. It was scary to see entire neighborhoods that looked like ghost towns, FEMA trailers everywhere, shattered windows and debris and tarps and depression and businesses that have never re-opened.

The French Quarter, the Garden District and Downtown are all relatively untouched, full of tourists and partiers, beer and hand grenades and drunk people, fights and boobs and vomit and piss. IT IS SO AWESOME.

We ate so much good food, shrimp po' boys and red beans and rice and cajun meat pies seafood gumbo. WE DRANK, people, oh boy, yes we did. We spent time with two of my favorite people in the world, one of whom just got a belt buckle that says "MFA", which stands for "Motha Fuckin' Artists". All in all, it was a wonderful trip.

And, hey, our car didn't burst into flames. Score.

Walt freakin' Disney.

Jude
Originally uploaded by Buford Union Davis.

Jude got tested for RLC last week, and we're still waiting to hear the results. I just know he'll get in. He's obviously a genuis- the kid can NOT follow directions. That's how you know if someone is a genius. Jude is planning in his head how to take over the world and simultaneously come into possession of ALL the skateboards and candy in the U.S. It's really unreasonable for me to expect that he can also pick up his socks and flush the toilet. But I am an unreasonable bitch, so really I don't mind filling the role.

My job = I am so very, very tired. THAT'S ALL I'M SAYING.

"Call the poliiiiiiiiice."

John,

Aren't you just excited about this part of your life? I am excited for you. I want all these good things for you, and I know that even if you don't get the specific things that I want for you, your life will still be full, and good, and happy.

I can still remember riding in the back seat of my mother's car, holding hands in the dark, and liking each other so much. We were so young, twelve or thirteen I think, so it was ,like, over fifty years ago, and I can't remember exactly what we said to each other or why we didn't ever "go together". But isn't it wonderful that we didn't? I am a firm believer that every choice you make, from what college to go to or what job to accept, down to where to stop for gas or where to buy your groceries, decides the path your life will travel. And I'm so happy and proud for the path your life has taken. So I've never regretted that I was never your girlfriend, because our lives are so blessed and it is partly because we were such good friends.

Dude, we've done a lot of stuff. We've bowled, we've played Dungeons and Dragons, we've played a LOT of different video games, we've talked on the phone until the absolute wee hours of the morning watching Ren and Stimpy marathons. We took several film classes together in college, and it made class so much more interesting and fun to sit next to you and laugh when other kids would try to see if they could fit their entire bodies into Millard's butt. We have spent a lot of time at bars and at Mason's running our mouths for hours and hours about music, movies, philosophy, politics, love, and life in general. I have actual video tape of you playing a red electric guitar over a tiny amp and singing Nirvana songs, John. You can just send $50 a month to my home address if you don't want those to get out to the general public. I also have video footage of you speaking with a speech impediment and me practically speaking with a speech impediment because that's how bad I am at a British accent, which involved our other friends being hobos, handicapped ballerinas, and drug dealers. WE HAVE A LOT GOING ON IN OUR HEADS, MY FRIEND, and it started at a young age. Don't ever forget that you have the capacity, which you use often, to be bizarre, and funny, and unabashed, and brilliant.

You have done so many good things, and you are such a person, you know? I am incredibly lucky to know you, and I'm even luckier to have known you for this long. A little over twenty years, John, we've been friends. I remember when you were a little boy and I was a little girl. It's a special thing to be able to share someone's whole life this way, this way that I'm getting to share yours with you. And I know it's not your whole life yet, but one day it will be, and I'll still be there. I feel humble to have known the good things that you've been given in life, and even more humbled to have known the bad things that you've endured, because really we don't just let everyone in, do we? And while our friendship has waxed and waned over the years, that doesn't really matter; the important thing is that today, if we want to, we can still call each other and talk about our lives, our days, our accomplishments and our failures.

John, what I'm telling you in my roundabout, physically-cannot-just-get-to-point-already way is congratulations. You have worked really hard to do this. You moved away from a lot of your friends and family and started a life in a city that was exotic, and dangerous, and unpredictable, and unfamiliar and I doubt that I could ever be that strong. Then, when the city fell apart and was nearly wiped clean from the face of this planet, when almost all of your possessions had been drowned in a sea of motor oil and sewage, when your family here was worried about you and concerned for your future, you went back. You went back to a city made up entirely of uncertainty, a city largely without most of the modern conveniences that we take for granted, a city that was increasingly being forgotten by the rest of the country. You went back and finished what you started, finished what you went there for in the first place. You should kiss any nervous problems that you've ever had goodbye, my friend, because no matter how it may feel sometimes you have overcome them.

I love you. Thank you for letting me be your friend, and for being mine.

I'm gon' let the sun shine in.

Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

So things are slowly getting better around here. Reed hasn't had fever since Friday night, and I suddenly became able to breathe yesterday. This was some crap, I tell you. Reed had the fever from last Saturday until Friday night. That's a pretty long-lasting virus. Jason witnessed me having a full-blown, gasping, fear-of-dying asthma attack on Friday, which I've never had before. I'm a once-a-month kind of gal with my inhaler, and throughout this sickness I've been using that sucker about eight or ten times a day. It's been really awful.

But, I'm hoping that we're on the other side of it now. Things are getting better for Reed and me, and I'm praying that Jason, Kane and Jude don't get it. Jason's feeling kind of snotty, but hopefully it'll pass. He's got a big honker; it gets the snot sometimes.

This weekend we're taking off for New Orleans with Kristi, Linnea and Lindsey, and I am READY. Our original hotel choice called to say that they were closing for repairs, so we had to find a place at the last minute. The place we're staying now is more expensive but totally sweet. It's on Toulouse Street right in the French Quarter, so I'm pretty sure that we're going to mix it up quite a bit. It will be a short but MUCH NEEDED respite from the past couple of months.

More pissed.

Well, Reed and I are both still grossly sick. And he's learning to aim those snot rockets, so watch out!

When we went to the emergency room, they gave him 6 mL of Motrin to bring down the fever. We had been giving him Tylenol, but the dosage we were giving him was 1.6 mL, so I figured that it was some kind of emergency get-that-fever-down dose. Later I mentioned to the nurse how the "mega-dose" of Motrin they gave him knocked the fever down pretty quickly. She replied, "That's the regular dose. That's the dose you ought to be giving him." So I said, "Wow, we've only been giving him 1.6 mL." She said, "Oh, maybe that's why his fever wouldn't go down, because you weren't giving him enough of it."

The doctor at the emergency room later confirmed that we could give him 6 mL of Tylenol and 6 mL of Motrin in rotating shifts every 4 hours. I kept saying, "Wow, that's just so much. We had been giving him 1.6 mL." As we were leaving the nurse said, "Did they tell you? You can give it to him every 2 hours."

When I took him to his regular doctor, I asked again if 6 mL was really what we should have been giving him. He said yes, that we could give him that much every 3 hours, not 4 or 2. I was starting to feel dizzy at that point, so I got him to tell me "6 mL" one more time. I commented that we had only been giving him 1.6 mL because that's what we thought his correct dosage was. (This story is going somewhere, I promise.)

So yesterday I called the doctor again to say that the fever was still pretty high (staying in the 103 range), and that now he had a wet, hacking cough, and he just didn't seem to be getting any better. The nurse called me back and said, of course, "It's a viral infection. You really just have to wait it out." We were just about to get off the phone when I said, "And we're supposed to be giving him 6 mL of the Tylenol or Motrin, right?" At this point I had been giving him 6 mL doses since Tuesday, so for about 48 hours.

She sat there for a second, and said, "Uh, no, 1.6 mL. He's 15 months, right? And he weighs about 26 pounds? 1.6 mL."

It was about that time that I started weeping and hyperventilating. And yelling.

"Then WHY did DR. NAMEREMOVEDBECAUSEHE'SACOCKSUCKERANYWAY tell me 6 mL? And WHY did they tell me that at the emergency room?"

I could tell that the nurse was getting flustered. There were a lot of "um"s and "uh"s coming from her end of the line. Then she said, "Are you giving him Childrens' Motrin or Infants' Motrin?" I told her Infants' Motrin. She said, "Okay, yeah, the infant stuff is concentrated, so he's only supposed to have 1.6 mL."

So I sobbingly sputtered out, "SO WHAT YOU'RE TELLING ME IS THAT I'VE BEEN POISONING MY CHILD FOR THE PAST TWO DAYS." She said, "He'll be okay. Don't worry; it'll be okay." I replied, "NONONO, I'M ANGRY." Her reply was, "Oh. Hm."

I eventually demanded to speak to the doctor, and of course the doctor wasn't there. So then I hung up on her, which I realize isn't necessarily the BEST reaction, but I was gasping for air by that point and I just couldn't make any more words come except for "FUCK" and "BITCHES" and "AX" and "MOTHERBASTARD".

So later we talked to poison control and they said that the amount he took isn't toxic, so he'll be fine. Which is great, and that's the bottom line.

BUT THE NEXT LINE UP FROM THAT BOTTOM ONE IS THIS ONE WHERE I AM ON FIRE INSIDE, so mad that I can hardly comprehend it, so mad that I can barely form sentences about it (my Crazy Speak interpreter Juan is typing this right now, say hello Juan- Hola!). I cannot be the only person in America who didn't realize that there was a difference between Infants' and Childrens' Motrin, and I know the whole time that I was saying "Motrin" and "Tylenol", NO ONE ever said, "Now that's CHILDRENS' Motrin, not INFANTS'." And shouldn't someone make that distinction? Really? Especially when I kept saying "We've only been giving him 1.6 mL." Shouldn't that have rung a bell in someone's air-filled head?

I am Reed's mother, and believe me when I say that I take some responsibility here. I have felt more guilt over the past twelve hours than I thought possible. I have pictured, over and over, forcing Reed to take all that medicine, nearly FOUR TIMES what he should have been given, and wept because I know now that my initial instincts- that it was too much medicine- were right. I think, I could have killed him. I could have killed him myself. I could have ruined his liver entirely, and he deserves the opportunity to do that himself with beer and painkillers in his college years AND I ALMOST TOOK THAT AWAY FROM HIM.

But I also feel like those people, those people who go through years of schooling to learn how to take care of my child, and who I now pay large sums of money to take care of my child AND to tell me how to take care of him when I don't know, they have some responsibility here, too. I questioned that dosage over and over again, and I told them how much we had been giving him. It would have taken one breath and three seconds to tell me that I needed to be using Children's Motrin instead of Infant's Motrin.

So, here we are, alive but barely. I don't know what's going to happen from here. The nurses supposedly left word for the doctor to call me today, but I'm not sure what I might say. I KNOW that we're finding another pediatrician, because there have just been too many problems over the past week that could have been avoided.

Thank the good lord that MY doctor believes in Medication, and I have a nice bottle of codeine to get through this, because I would be setting buildings on fire by now if I didn't.

Pissed.

Pissed.
Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

So you know before how I wasn't cool enough to say that I had ever been to the emergency room? Well I'm cool now!

Reed has been sick since Saturday with a fever and a runny nose, and on Monday I spoke to the nurse at his doctor's office twice. Both times she said that his 102.7 degree fever wasn't any reason for him to come in, as well as the fact that he wasn't eating, as well as the fact that he wasn't drinking as much as he usually does.

As the afternoon wore on, his fever stopped responding to the Tylenol, and he stopped drinking altogether, and he stopped responding to us when we talked to him. It took THREE PHONECALLS to the after hours service and an hour-and-a-half later they finally called back and said we should PROBABLY take him to the emergency room.

When we left the house his temperature was 103.7. When we got the emercency room it was 105. They gave him some Motrin, took a chest x-ray and told us it was just a viral infection and sent us home (after only five hours).

We took him to his regular doctor and he did more tests and said that it is a viral infection. The exciting part is that now I have it, so Reed and I are both writhing about the house in perpetual pain, high fevers and snot rockets to boot. This is the sickest I've ever been, the absolute worst that I've ever felt, and I feel so awful that my baby has to be feeling the same thing that I'm feeling. There were moments on the car ride to the emergency room when I feared that something really bad might happend to him, and it made me feel like my life was over, that I was a total failure and nothing else I had ever done mattered.

But then I got the anger, so it's okay now.

The phlegm icing on this snotty cake is that we currently don't have health insurance. Mine lapsed at the end of February, and Jason's won't pick up until he's worked 800 hours. So we get the added joy of owing a hundred million dollars to the emergency room.

I'm just glad that he's okay and that he's recovering. Now if I can just get better, all will be right with the world again.

I haven't ever thought to, you know, BREATHE AIR before.

Kane really digs origami. I've given him a couple of books and packs of paper over the years to help him in his pursuits, and we usually all get into it at some point.

Over the last few days, Jude has taken a great interest in origami, but he's hit a few speed bumps along the way. Jason has tried to show him a few times how to make a couple of things. He said the other night that he spent quite a while trying to show Jude how to make a swan using the instruction book, and Jude just kept saying, "No, I want you to show me how to DO origami." Jason kept saying, "I'm TRYING to show you how to DO origami." They never really reached a point of understanding with each other, and they both gave up after a while.

Tonight Jude came in while I was dressing Reed and said, "You know, I really like origami. But I just can't seem to really GET IT." So I said, "Well, it's pretty hard, but you just have to read the instructions and fold where they say to fold."

He replied, "OH. Hm. That's interesting. I haven't ever thought to READ the book before."

Can anybody see how I might want to SPOON my eyeballs right out of my head and then throw them out the window?

It's yo' thang; do what you wanna do.

So today was Reed's very first day at daycare. TODAY WAS THE DAY I LEFT MY SON WITH PEOPLE I HAD SPENT ABOUT THIRTY MINUTES IN MY WHOLE LIFE WITH. Needless to say, I was a little high-strung.

When we took him in, the other kids were eating breakfast. His teacher put Reed in a highchair to let him have some; when she gave him the bowl of waffles and sausage, he looked at her like she was crazy and pushed the bowl away. Then he looked at us like, "Um, NO." We started saying "bye-bye" and waving at him and he totally didn't cry. He just looked at me like, "You are abandoning me now, you heartless wench, and I will never forgive you." I heard it in my head, so it's pointless to try and convince me that he didn't say it to me in my head.

When we picked him up his teacher said that he cried some after we left once he realized that we were gone, which made me feel like I might throw up right there on the spot. She showed us the cloud he made out of blue construction paper and cotton balls, and I felt a little better.

All in all, it's the only choice we have, so we're going with it, but THIS MIGHT BE THE THING THAT FINALLY DOES ME IN. The women's rights movement gave us so many choices that we wouldn't have had without it, but because the cost of living has risen so drastically in comparison with average wages a lot of us have one fewer choice than our parents and our parents' parents had.

I'll get over it eventually, but not too soon so really don't go expecting me to be all NORMAL any time in the near future. Normal is just not my thing.

Baby step to the elevator. Baby step to the elevator. Baby step, get on the elevator.

So today I had Reed in our bedroom with me while I dried my hair. He is absolutely fascinated with the blow drier, so he's actually pretty easy to deal with when I fix my 'do. Today, for some reason, he wanted to spend the entire time with his head buried in my ass. I kept stopping and saying, "Dude, what are you doing? Come around here." But every time I flipped my head over to start drying again, I would see his little face peering up at me as he planted his head firmly against the back of my ass. I don't know why- that's just where he wanted to be. Kids are weird, I tell you.

Then we went and TOURED A DAYCARE. Baby steps, people. It's close to where my mom works, and the price is reasonable, and all the teachers and kids were nice, so I'm pretty sure that we're going for it. The thing that cracks me up about it is that Reed will be, literally, the only white kid there. Actually I'm pretty sure he'll be the only white PERSON there, period. Jason and I are both pretty excited about it. I know when Jason was little he went to a GHETTO daycare in a predominantly black neighborhood, and he seems to look back on it fondly. And don't anybody try to get on my case- Jason showed me the daycare he went to, and it is in the ghetto. That's what I mean when I say that he went to a ghetto daycare.

A couple of people have expressed, to me and to my family, concerns about Reed going to a daycare with all "black kids" and "inner city" kids, and frankly I'm a little appalled. Look, I realize that racism exists, but it's just so odd when it pops up right in front of you. At least to me it is. I just find it surprising when a person who seems intelligent and genial enough is suddenly pale and tight-lipped in my presence because I've decided to send my son to daycare with black kids. For me, that doesn't make any sense, and it bothers me quite a bit. But you know, they'll get over it. Either that or I'll have to go all crazy on them, like I do on Jason when I haven't had a beer in a while. THAT is scary, and he can tell you that the only way to calm me down at that point is to wave a burrito in my face until it gets the better of me and I sit down and order some cheese dip. And why would a racist person be carrying a MEXICAN food item in his pocket?

I really SHOULD buy a fire extinguisher.

Well, I am once again employed and my new job really doesn't involve the internet in any fashion, thank the good lord Jesus because we all know what happens when I'm on the internet- I encourage anarchy, lawlessness, left-wingism and heavy drinking. I am very dangerous. I am single-handedly erroding America's good, wholesome family values as we speak.

I have to say again that I feel very... constipated and uncomfortable to have this entire section of my life that I can't write about. I'm thinking of writing to Oprah about it. Oprah, if you're reading this, maybe you should do a show on bloggers who get fired because of their writing and still think that they ought to be able to write whatever they damn well please! Good idea!

So Jason, in all his glory as The Most Distractable Man In America, managed to leave his car running, unlocked, for nine hours yesterday. He has to park and ride a shuttle to his work, and the shuttle was leaving and he was trying to get all his stuff out of the car quickly so he could run to meet it. When the shuttle dropped him off that evening he said he thought, "Man, whose car is running?" As he approached his, he saw the keys in the ignition and the lights on and realized, "Hey! Woops! MY car is running!"

It makes me think of the time that Kristi and I almost burnt down my mom's house trying to re-heat soup. Yes, friends, you can start a fire with cold soup. IT CAN BE DONE. My mom had done the unthinkable and left us alone in the house, and we decided to heat up some beef stew for lunch. We put it on stove and turned it on and then thought, "Hey, we should really leave this red-hot unit and head back to the very back of the house to play Barbies with the bedroom door closed so that we won't know if anything ODD is going on up here in the kitchen!" My dog Poochie came back with us, and about an hour later she was shuffling in circles and looking at us as if to say, "You fucking idiots! We're about to die in an inferno if you don't get us the hell out of here! Do you have any treats?" That's when we noticed the smell of smoke, so we opened the door and the house was indeed totally filled with smoke. We got out fine, and no real damage was done to the house besides a couple of burnt spots on the countertops, but it just goes to show you how stupid smart people really are.

Sopping it up.

DSC_0268.JPG
Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

Well, the worst of the weather missed us. It got pretty green and still outside for a while, which was nerve-wracking, but every time I looked at the news the funnel clouds were north and south of us. We got some rain, wind, thunder, and lightning, but that's about the long and short of it. It makes me feel so lucky, especially with all the damage in Enterprise, Alabama. A lot of people died down there, and all that's been on the news since is the really heart breaking eyewitness testimony of teenagers and teachers and other people who experienced the tornadoes firsthand. I hope everyone down there is able to move on and recover from this terrible tragedy, a tragedy that Alabamians deal with almost every year.

I found out yesterday that one of my close friends had a house fire earlier this week. WHAT THE HELL, PEOPLE? My grandparents AND one of my friends, two days apart from each other? What are the odds? It's just so random and bizarro. I can't even really come up with any sort of commentary on the subject because it boggles the mind so.

So for now I'm going to change the batteries in our smoke detector and buy a fire extinguisher. You best do it, too, because it's going around.

Batten down the hatches, folks; a storm's a comin'.

Well, there's weather in Alabama, which means most people around here are taking cover in their storm shelters after buying out every loaf of bread and every gallon of milk in the tri-county area. This happens three or four times a year- some massive storm system will head our way, and every news anchor and weather person around will start talking about all the devastation and destruction it's going to cause, then all the schools will close, then everyone will go temporarily insane and start driving really badly and buying lanterns, and then we'll get some rain, and then life will go back to normal. Except everyone will be trying to decide what to do with all those bulk packages of peanut butter and batteries they bought.

I don't want to tempt fate here- sometimes we do get some really awful weather that does some really awful damage. But that tends to happen about one out of eight or ten times that we go through all this, so most times it's easier just to assume that it won't be that bad, because it's usually not.

My grandparents' house caught on fire yesterday. I'm not entirely sure about the story, but my dad said that the kitchen will probably have to be completely remodeled. They're both fine, thank goodness, but a little shaken up. They've gone to stay at my dad's house, I guess until their house is fixed, which means dad and Wanda's lives are going to be enriched by the sweet sounds of the woes of constant ailments, and they might want to see if they can fireproof... well, everything.