Isn't it ironic; don't you think?

Of course our Wii is faulty. OF COURSE IT IS. Why would we expect to NOT be one of the random people who purchases one of the random faulty consoles? I don't know why were so insolent.

So now we just have to wait four to five days for Nintendo to get back in touch with us, and find out what they shall have us do. There are much worse things in the world than a Wii that freezes up four times in the first hour-and-a-half that it's used and then inumerable times the next day, BUT I JUST CAN'T THINK OF ANY RIGHT NOW, FOR THE LOVE OF MARIO AND LUIGI.

Yeah, you heard right.

Yeah, you heard right.
Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

So, we just accidentally managed to get ahold of a
Wii today.

We were at Target, and we noticed a lot of activity in the electronics section, so we went to check it out. There in all their pristine beauty were two Wiis in the display case. I literally gasped and grabbed Jason's arm and said, "They HAVE some."

One was being taken out and purchased as we walked up. There was one Wii left and two people in front of us. Well, one lady, and three teenage boys who were waiting together. Jason instinctively wanted to leave and check other places to see if there were more. I instinctively wanted to stay and see if we could strangle those three boys, hide the bodies, and buy the Wii.

We waited and watched as the first lady in line led the sales person to a different section and did NOT buy that Wii. While we waited I walked up to the boys and asked if they were waiting to buy it. They said, "Yes ma'am, we are. Well, maybe. We don't know. How much is it?" I was like, "Where the fuck have you shut-ins been, mothafucka? They're $250. If you guys aren't sure that you're buying it, I'm going to wait in line behind you because I want it bad." They were like, "Yes ma'am."

Jason was still anxious to leave, so he went to Best Buy to see if they had any. I dutifully waited to see what would happen.

When the sales person finally got to them, they asked him how much it was and then stood there looking at each other as if they were thinking, "Well, I already HAVE one gold monkey and thirteen Dead Sea scrolls, so MAYBE I need a Wii." So I piped up, "Uh, if these guys don't want that last Wii, I DEFINITELY DO, so I've got dibs if they don't buy it."

At that point, they ALL looked at me like I was senile, and the sales guy said, "There are more in the back." I literally threw my arms up in the air, touchdown-style, and said, "I WANT ONE. I WANT ONE NOW. I WANT TO BUY ONE."

And I swear, it was like I had suddenly entered some alter universe in which no one had heard of or cared anything about the Nintendo Wii, because they acted like me and about a million other people hadn't just spent the last four weeks making 147 phone calls a day to Wal-Mart (the devil), Target (Heaven), Best Buy, Circuit City, and Game Stop and promising we'd never buy a new sweater again if we could just find a Wii.

BUT WHO CARES; I GOT A WII FOR CHRISTMAS!!! Kane and Jude who???

What the HELL are you supposed to do with all those boxes and wrappingpaper?

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Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

Reed's answer: eat 'em.

This has been a wonderful Christmas. I got a sweet purse and Friends Scene It from Jason, and lots of other cool stuff from everybody else. The best part is all the time I've gotten to spend with everyone.

Things are going well here at Casa de Agan. It makes me wish even harder that I could stay home with Reed. But, you know, such is life.

We're going out to eat tonight with a bunch of our buddies, and I'm sure it will prove to be a good time. Any restaurant that is commonly known as "Fuckin' Hung's" MUST be good, right?

And many mooooooooooooore!

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Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

This sign was in the yard across the street from Jason's brother's house on Christmas Eve. I think it's awfully nice that Jesus wants us to buy EACH OTHER X Boxes and Playstations on HIS birthday; don't you?

We wish you a merry Christmas.

Did y'all notice that it's Christmas time? It is.

For some people, Christmas time means nothing at all. For some, it means lots and lots of presents. For some, it means baby Jesus was born. For some people, it's a time to spend time with your family and friends, and be thankful for all the wonderful times you have in your life.

As for me, I'm just enjoying these many hours I'm able to spend with my very favorite people in the world, and I'm praying that every single person I've ever known is able to slow down and be happy and take some time to enjoy the blessings that they have. No matter how many hardships you've endured, or disappointments you've suffered, there is SOMETHING to be thankful for. For me, it's Reed, and Jason, and all the other people who I love to love.

What are you thankful for this year? I bet there's something.

Twee Agan.

If we ever have another baby, I hope it's a girl, and I'm going to name her Twee. I think it's important for everyone to know that; if we ever have a little girl, she will be Twee Agan. I shall call her Twee, and she shall be mine. She will be my Twee.

It has been really really wonderful being with Reed these past few days. I have always been aware that I'm missing out on a lot when I'm at work for nine-and-a-half hours every day, but these days have made me painfully aware. He talks so much; he sits down with his toys and just plays, plays, plays and talks and laughs. He talks to me, too. He tells me long, drawn-out stories that I'm pretty sure involve me, and he gives me his toys so that I can play with them, too. When Jason gets home from work, he gets the biggest smile on his face and runs to the door and literally just stands and waits for it to open. Jason told me that, the last few days of work before my vacation, Reed would start to ask for me towards the end of the day. This is HUGE for me, to know, to have evidence, that he thinks of me and misses me when I'm not here.

This morning, I decreed that Jason should go to McDonald's and get us biscuits. While he was gone, I was sitting in the rocking chair and Reed was playing with his toys when he sat down in a basket and couldn't get up. It's the classic scenario, sometimes played out with garbage cans, in which Person falls in either head- or butt-first and can't get back out. And what did I do? Did I gently pull him back out and make sure that he was okay? NO, SILLY, I laughed my ass off and got the camera, that's what I did. He cried and fussed for about the first 45 seconds, but then he became strangely resolved to his fate. He got completely calm, and just hung out in the basket. He talked a little, explored his surroundings, and gazed out the window. Ah, that we could ALL have the ability to adapt so quickly.

Bourbon balls and boogers.

You know it's Christmas when some very loud guy from the print shop is running around here giving you his bourbon balls. Well, he didn't actually give me any; he just kept saying to me, "YOU'RE underage." But, how nice everyone I work with is, because two or three people gave me their bourbon balls when they found out I didn't get one. Nothing says "Baby Jesus is born!" like a hunk of whiskey, chocolate, and coconut that you can't eat before driving.

Reed has learned a new trick. Yesterday while I was at work Reed was sitting in his highchair, having some lunch, when Jason felt the urge to wee wee. So, he walked the ten feet from the kitchen to the hall bathroom, closed the door, and started to wee wee. He said after a moment he heard slow, steady footsteps coming down the hallway. He stopped midstream which is so painful and bad for you if you're a guy, and started to freak out because someone was in the house. Suddenly, the bathroom door was FLUNG open, and there stood REED holding a spoon and babbling at Jason. The part about this that is the funniest and most curious is that Reed managed to get out of his highchair, to get up and climb out of it, without making any noise at all. This means that he didn't fall or jump out of it, but that he somehow scaled down the side to the floor.

Also, Reed has learned how to stick his finger in his nose. I wouldn't really call it picking so much as poking; I don't think that he gets yet that there are treasures to be harvested from that cavity. He just likes to stick his finger in there. It's a little freaky sometimes how far up there he can get that thing. I mean, think, honestly, about how far you can stick your finger up your nose- I bet about an inch for most folks, which probably brings you about a third to a quarter of the way down your finger. You can get about a third or a quarter of your finger into your nose successfully. Well, REED CAN KICK YOUR ASS, SUCKERS because he can get his in there about half-way which, relatively speaking, is FREAKY. He is dedicated, too; he will continue sticking it further and further until his eyes actually start to water up from the pain BECAUSE YOUR NOSTRIL IS ONLY SO BIG, PEOPLE.

Feliz Navi- blaaaarrgh!

This is my first Christmas season at this job, so I'm new to all of the traditions here with my coworkers. One of the traditions is to go out to lunch together on the last day of work before Christmas break. They pass around a little sheet where you can write in a suggestion for where we go; my boss said "you know, if you have a favorite place or some place that you really like to go, you can write it in."

So when the list got to me, the only suggestions so far were a place called Bright Star that I'd never heard of, and Highlands Bar and Grill which I have heard of and it intimidates me a little bit, mainly because I could pay for about four months of Kane and Jude's school lunches for the amount it would cost for me to eat there once. With no appetizer. And only water to drink. So, I couldn't decide what the hell to suggest. I mean, MY favorite place to eat is a little place called Moe's, where you can get a burrito the size of Lindsey's niece for about $5 (for real, Ava is teeny tiny, but quite big for a burrito). So I sat there and mulled it over, and for some reason that I can not fathom all I could come up with was Cafe Dupont. I've been there once, many years ago when they were still located in Springville, and it was really delicious. It is also pretty expensive; I guess that's why I thought of it- I felt too embarrassed to pick any place that I would actually regularly go when the last person had suggested Highlands.

So I wrote in my little suggestion and passed it on. A few days later I heard the department secretary saying, "They keep pickin' all these expensive places; why are they pickin' all these expensive places?" And, you know, I get it. I don't generally go to expensive places either. So when the sheet got passed around again so that we could all vote, I voted for the Fish Market because it is really quite tasty and price is midrange- not cheap, but not sell-your-children expensive, either.

Well, Bright Star ended up winning, and while the website looks quite nice and the prices are pretty steep, people outside of work keep telling me how nasty and creepy and not good it is. Jason was like, "Ew, call ahead of time and check the health rating, because I've heard some TERRIBLE stuff about that place!" So now I'm terribly excited about going there and paying them $30 to give me e coli, because THAT STUFF DOES NOT COME CHEAP, no ma'am.

Jason and I were musing over the whole thing a couple of nights ago at the dinner table. I was saying how I felt stupid for suggesting Cafe Dupont, and I said, "I should have just thought of a good Mexican restaurant and suggested that; maybe we'd be going there instead. But, you know, I don't think they like Mexican food the way I do."

At this, Jason choked on his spaghetti. After he regained his composure, he said, "Buffy, MEXICANS do not like Mexican food the way you do."

'Tis the season to be bloated and miserable.

The director of the library brought in not one, not two, but THREE different kinds of sweet treats for us today, made by his loving and dedicated wife. There is a sour cream pound cake with some sort of crunchy, nutty, cinnamony topping, three different kinds of fudge, and a large tin of cookies from an old family recipe. He brought them in at 9:30 this morning; let's just say that I'm a little nauseated by now.

I was thinking that I wish that I had the time to make things to send to work with Jason for his coworkers; but what do you send to a bakery? I couldn't really send them cookies and cakes; they'd all just be like, "Yeah, I can do this better." Porterhouse steaks? Chips and joints? Strippers? Porterhouse steaks and chips and joints and strippers? I think I'm on to something.

Reason #962 why I married Jason: He rubs my sock-wrinkles.

You say it's your birthday?

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Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

Yesterday was Reed's first birthday party, his first time eating pizza, his first time having "Happy Birthday" sung to him, and his first time sucking on a pair of Nikes.

It was a good day.

And I feel that time's a wasted go.

This morning on the way to work I heard the unplugged version of Plush by Stone Temple Pilots on the radio. As the audience started to clap and whistle, I was thinking that if I'd been there back then, I would have yelled "I love you, Scott Weiland!!"

Over the years, I've had crushes on quite a few lead singers. I found people like Scott Weiland and Eddie Vedder to be raw, passionate, and dangerous. And when you're right in the middle of some teenage angst, especially girly teenage angst, the idea of someone who might toss you around a bit while he kisses you passionately and talks about starving children in Botswana is really quite divine.

One of the sadder things about growing up is that a lot of these guys have a lot of faults, many of which have been exposed over the years. We all have faults, but as a seventeen-year-old girl, I just didn't think, "Oh, I bet Kurt Cobain's heroin habit and incessant whining about how hard fame is would REALLY wear on my fucking nerves after a while." I held these people in such high regard, and it's hard to think of them as imperfect, or joyless, or boring, or irritating, or dangerous- not dangerous in that sexy way, but in that way that you might go to jail for several years for possession even though you didn't even know that he HAD the damn stuff in his pocket. (This doesn't really apply to Eddie Vedder; he is beautiful and perfect and I will never speak badly of him, even if he CAN manage to fall off of a stool midsong on camera.)

The funniest part about these thoughts that I was having on the way to work was realizing that, after all these years and all these crushes, I married a sexy lead singer.

But I got very lucky, because I have learned his faults over the years and they're beautiful, and warranted, and won't cause me to have to serve hard time. I'm also lucky because he's learned my faults, and he's still here, and he loves me FOR them, not in spite of them. Lastly, I'm lucky because he makes me better all the time.

Oh. And also because he is damn fine when he's makin' love to that microphone.

There's frost on the punkin.

I found this definition, thought you would enjoy:

Catharsis may refer to:
* Catharsis, a term used to describe ritual, punitive and other forms of purification for religious and other uses and is also applied to emotional release
* (medicine) the effect of a cathartic, which is a strong laxative

Sometimes we all need to take a poop, I guess.

I got this in a message from a good friend, and decided I'd like to share it here. Because we DO all need to take a poop sometimes.

I've discovered that I'm much more resilient and sure of myself than I previously thought. I've also figured out that my family is my touchstone, and having them grounds me in a way that I just hadn't realized before. This is a place where I come to make sense, and sometimes comedy, out of my daily life. To be able to get it all out, to get it away from me so I can judge it from further away, is cathartic.

I think it can best be summed up by Cher from Clueless, as I'm sure most things can be:

"It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess."

Overheard in the electronics section at Target.

14-Year-Old Girl: Ah! You'll spend, like, $250 on a purse, but you won't spend $200 on an iPod Nano? THAT IS WACKED.

Chubby Redneck Dad: You've got an iPod already! I don't want to hear anything else about it.

14-Year-Old Girl: Psh. Whatever.

One year.

Reed,

Today is your birthday. You've been here with us for 365 days and nights. You were born at 2:52 p.m., so technically, at this time, you were still hanging out in my warm, inviting uterus saying "Ain't no WAY I'm going out there."

There were times in the beginning when I thought that I might not make it. I spent many nights standing over your crib, back aching, praying to God that you might sleep so I might sleep. I just don't think that many women realize what it's like to only be able to sleep for two hours at a time for several weeks straight. I sure didn't. I think I may have held you too much when you were tiny. Sometimes when I'd finally get you to sleep, I would just hold you and rock you and stare at your tiny face; before I knew it, nap time had passed and you were awake again, without my ever having put you down in your crib. There were days when your daddy would come home from work and I wouldn't have peed all day, because I'd just been holding you and talking to you and feeding you and singing to you, and the moment he'd come through the door I'd say, "TAKE HIM BEFORE I WET MYSELF." My point is that I never wanted to take my eyes off of you.

I stayed home with you for eight weeks after you were born. The first day that I went back to work at the library was one of the hardest days I've ever faced. I cried the whole way there, because I felt like leaving you was the most awful thing I could possibly do. I felt like you deserved better; you deserved a mom who could find a way to stay with you and be with you and talk and sing and laugh all day long. I still sometimes feel like my heart is being squeezed and crushed when I think about the fact that I spend so many hours every day away from you. To miss even a single giggle, or a single word, or a single bumped noggin makes me feel like a failure, and I'm sorry for that.

I'm sorry that I'm so far from perfect, that I don't smile all the time, that I can't be happy every single moment we're together. I'm working on that, and I hope that I'll have it fixed by your next birthday. I want you to know a happy childhood, to remember these times in fuzzy snapshots of daddy and me hugging, and laughing, and kissing you over and over again. Having you has also made me much closer to your brothers, and that's something that I'll never be able to thank you enough for.

You have just over the past few weeks started saying "mama" sincerely and often. It makes me feel like the most important, and the most humble, person in the whole wide world every time you say it. I hope that you'll always call me mama. You've also started "asking" me to pick you up; you'll stand next to my legs and lift your arms up and look up at me like you're thinking, "Lift, please." I can't really explain how tiny, how vulnerable you feel in my arms, how fiercely I want to protect you and make you smile. It is a feeling so intense that there are moments when I feel like I have to decompress, take a break and breathe for a minute, because your safety consumes me so completely.

Right now you like to watch Teletubbies and Dawson's Creek. I think a little television is okay, but I don't try to push it on you because I want you to grow up knowing how to use your brain, to be creative and play without having someone else make up all the stories for you. You really love Teletubbies, and your favorite parts involve the actual teletubbies, not the parts with the videos of other children. You mainly just like the intro to Dawson's Creek; with the very first beat of the song you will stop WHATEVER you're doing and listen and smile. This CRACKS ME UP because your aunt Lindsey has been telling me for so long that you are a Gilmore Girls fan and I've never understood it, and now I know that your true love is the Creek. THIS I can understand, because we all need a little high school drama from time to time, a few scenarios in which things happen that would never happen in real life to people who are much too pretty and perfect to be real people and who use run-on sentences filled with words that I don't even know the meaning of.

You started walking around ten months, and you haven't stopped since. You work up such a momentum that I'm always afraid you're going to run into things and hurt yourself. We put foam covers over the corners of the coffee table to protect your huge melon, and your aunt Kristi has tested them thorougly and finds them to be totally acceptable.

When you were born, you were on the large side of average, but since then you've grown so quickly that you've almost been off the growth charts at every doctor visit. Your height, weight, and head circumference have stayed at least in the ninetieth percentile, most times higher, since your first doctor visit at two weeks. At your ten-month visit, Dr. Walley told us that you were the average size of a fifteen month old baby. Daddy and I often joke, when we see other little roly poly babies, that you could totally take any other baby in a cage match. I bet you could.

You exhibit so much of both your daddy and me that it's astonishing. Most recently, you've shown us how much of our own attitudes you've inherited. I can finally see what it must be like for daddy to deal with my smart ass when I deal with your smart ass. Anyone who ever thought that someone who can't form sentences can't be a smart ass is wrong, buddy, because when you hit me in the face with the ball end of your bulb syringe when I'm trying to get you to give me kiss, I GET IT. And I love you even more for it, because I'm so excited about raising someone and spending the rest of my life with someone who is witty and independent.

Over the last couple of months we've really started to let you eat grown-up food, and Reed, you really are your mother's son- you have a real affinity for Mexican food. You eat pinto beans as fast as I can give them to you, and you also really like the beef and bean mixture that we make for nachos. We also discovered, just a couple of weeks ago, that you take after your daddy in your love for olives, because let me tell you, you did not get that from me. But I love you even with your olive breath. I will always love you, baby, no matter what you eat, what kind of music you like, what you like to read, or who you want to be with. My only request is that you never, NEVER, become a republican.

I hope that daddy and I can help you to grow into a smart, kind, compassionate man, and I warn you that any girl you bring home will have to go through a rigorous acceptance process that is only for your own good. While big boobs might get her under daddy's radar, I am going to require a brain akin to my own and the same hatred for yo-boys that I possess. Yes, that's my other request- that you never become a yo-boy.

Reed, I just really want you to know how much you've changed my life and how grateful I am, for that change and for you. You are so beautiful, and so perfect, and so important to me, and I try to show you every day. I think you saved me in a lot of ways that no one else could have, and I will repay you for the rest of my life in hugs and kisses and snuggles. I hope that what I can give you is enough to make your life full and warm and safe and happy, because that is what I want for you every minute of every day. I will never know love with anyone else the way that I know it with you. I can't wait for the beginning of every day, for that moment that you wake up and start telling me how your night was. The way your little head feels against my cheek makes me thank God that I am alive, and that I made it to this place in my life.

I love you,

Mama