Hello, Internet,

You’re looking very pretty today, I must say. How’s the weather there? It’s supposed to snow here in Portland, Ore. (Ed. twenty minutes later to say: It’s snowing!!!) I’m doing as well as you’d expect, considering I have a throwing-up kid home from school and an eight-foot Christmas tree in the kitchen. And the kid wants to know when we’re decorating the tree, so I guess we’re on the mend.

Let’s all say a big huzza-huzza for that, and for grocery delivery services. If there’s anything worse than a puking kid at home, it’s a puking kid at the grocery store while you’re frantically grabbing crackers, popsicles and 7-up. The price of the groceries, plus ten bucks and a tip and they bring a box of food to you. Damn, I’d spend more than that on Ugly Dolls if I did the shopping myself. (Did I tell you that when we got to Iowa last week, there were two ginormous Ugly Dolls parked in the sunroom? Wacky Grandpa likes Ugly Dolls, too. He has Tray and Ox. Heh heh heh.) (Did I even tell you that we spent Thanksgiving in Iowa City? Where it is 60 degrees and sunny, and the grandparents played ball with the kids out in the yard. No coats, no hats, just Iowa sunshine.)

Hockey God hates the holidays, have I already mentioned that? He doesn’t hate the holidays, per se. He hates the holiday spirit. The pushing, the mass carnage, the hungry shoppers shoving Cinnabites into their pie-holes. I don’t know who un-Grinched him, but he’s ready for the holidays this year. He had fun on Thanksgiving. He is discussing the purchasing of presents, although he is unwilling to commit. It’s a start.

And he came home from running errands yesterday with this monster Douglas fir in the back of his pick-up. The trees had been out in the rain for a week at Fred Meyer, and ours got even more drenched on the short drive home. We put it in the stand (a new, bigger one, after another trip to Fred G. Meyer…) and there it stands, growing bigger and bigger as it dries, in the kitchen. I’m able to get to the dishwasher, just barely, and we can open the basement door so we’re good.

This is the first “real” tree that we’ve had, in the almost ten years we’ve been together. We had a live tree, that we let die, later, on the front porch, and a Norfolk pine that later died on its own; a couple of “Charlie Brown” trees. One year I think we counted the Christmas cactus as a tree, cuz it bloomed in time. About half the time we travel over the holidays so we don’t decorate much at all, those years.

Tonight the tree goes into the living room where the dog will not lift his leg on it.

Also, HG bought four boxes of lights. Red and green.

I have the biggest smile on my face right now.

Love,

WM

Start with: One riotously fun outing to Chuck E Cheez for D’s birthday party. Both kids: “THAT WAS FUN! CHUCK E CHEEZ IS FUN! WHY DIDN’T YOU EVER TAKE US THERE BEFORE? YEAH, WHY MOM? CUZ CHUCK E CHEEZ IS FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN. WHEN CAN WE GO BACK?”

Next day, combine: Pinkeye and runny nose in one Wacky Boy.

Following day, add:

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Make the Connection is sending out free bead bracelet kits to help educate the public about the link between HPV and cervical cancer. I dislike pharmaceutical companies about as much as the rest of you — except when they’re up against the religious right and fighting to get a much-needed vaccine on the market. And on the list of vaccines required by schools.

“I am not relegous,” I wrote in my journal as a Wacky Girl, age 9. I am not especially “relegous” now, especially when assholes like Bridget Maher are mouthing off.

“Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful,” Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, “because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.”

Yeah. Right. Anyway. And for the love of God, don’t give ’em any rubbers, cuz “something bad” might happen. Off soapbox. Here’s an article, if you’re interested, by Katha Pollitt of the Nation, titled “Virginity or Death!” Do some research, stay informed and talk to your kids. Talk, talk, talk.

HPV reportedly is not preventable by condoms. Tell them this.

Tell them to use rubbers anyway. And fight for this vaccine.

Thank you. This public service announcement brought to you by…

Wacky Mommy

Ya’ll realize, I hope, that if you’re looking at my blog and something really weird is there, under comments, that it is not our crowd — it’s the…

OK. I cannot use any of the words that these folks use to track me down. So read between the lines:

They’re sp@!mers. I f&!king despise them. I spend a large part of my day deleting na&*y comments left by s@amm#!$ on my blog and Hockey God’s. In fact, I deleted about 20 comments today alone on the two blogs, including half a dozen on Hockey God’s, left from the time we got home from Wacky Girl’s dentist appointment (at 6 p.m.) and now (8:30 p.m., same day).

Oddly, he gets about three times more junk mail than I do. Just like our snail mail.

Re: dentist. WG needs braces. She is six. “Six year olds don’t get braces!” you’re no doubt thinking, “They don’t, like, even have all their permanent teeth yet. WTF Wacky Mommy?” They get “appliances” now, then braces later. I have been told this is expensive. Please don’t tell me how expensive. I’m enjoying denial. Her teeth are way crookedy. Good word, no? Crookedy. Makes it seem almost comical, instead of “F&*@!ng h&*l we have to re-fi the house for this?” Her bite and jaw will get “even worse and she will need surgery,” according to the two dentists and two orthodontists we have seen.

“You might be looking at surgery, on down the road, anyway,” they say.

“It’s too soon to tell the extent of this,” they say. Although they all agree that the poor kid’s mouth is a mess.

“You can make payments,” they all say.

Good, good, that’s a comfort.

So the junk mail? Please ignore. Thanks and have a splendiferous night.

We’re winding down on another school year, which means we’ve had a handful of asthma scares (Wacky Girl. And thank God it was just a handful), the flu and colds (all of us), pinkeye (Wacky Boy, twice), bronchitis and bronchial pneumonia (me, two or three times? I lose track) and general ennui (especially Wacky Dee and myself. Could it be ALL THAT REMODELING? Yes, we have no money, thanks), all since last September. Well, huh.

And last week, for me, our little friend Norovirus. As as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would like you to know: “People infected with norovirus are contagious from the moment they begin feeling ill to at least 3 days after recovery. Some people may be contagious for as long as 2 weeks after recovery.” This virus is blazing through Portland and Vancouver. C’mon by! We’d love to share it with you.

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Feeling political today? Check out MomsRising.org. (Thanks to Staci for the tip.)

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The lice policy for Portland Public Schools is…

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Mine does. It’s not the Clap, it’s Lice. “Scratch, everybody! Scratch!” Yeah, I have some hideous sinus infection combo wallop thing, my throat is still trashed (the doctor took a long look at my vocal cords — “Are you sure they’re not damaged?” he asked. “No, I just sound sexy.”) The kids are finally over the flu-cold-respiratory thing they had, so they’re bouncing off the walls — which brings us to My Life in Hell, the Afternoon Session: Wacky Girl’s Class is Chock Full O’ Bugs.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day snuggliness.

Wacky Girl: “Y’know how we found out? S looked at S and said, ‘Hey, there’s something in your hair!’ And then that’s how we found out it was lice.”

Neat-o. Our heads have been checked and so far, so good. It’s just the power of suggestion is all.

Feeling itchy?

Dear Wacky Mommy,

How do I get people to stop assuming that because I am a first-time mom, I am an ijit? My IQ did not go down just because I got knocked up.

Signed,

Smarter Than You Think

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Too tired to blog — Wacky Boy is a handful. God love him, but he is a handful. He won’t eat. He punches the dog in the head. He leaves a trail of marbles behind him, wherever he goes. He’s like, a marble addict. I finally hid them all from him. He walks down the stairs with a Duplo bucket on his head. He’s had three concussions so far cuz he completely has No Fear. The only creature he loves in our household is Wacky Cat, who crawls into his bed and sleeps, even when Wacky Boy won’t. Here is Wacky Boy, 10 p.m., setting up a train track, overhead light turned on, singing his happy little Music Together songs, and here is Wacky Cat, peacefully snoring in the middle of the Hello Kitty comforter. (He borrowed it from his sister — it’s purple.)

He refuses to go to sleep until 11 at night, then flips out in the morning when you wake him up. Big surprise.

Yes, I get him up early, anyway, and no he doesn’t nap, and yes we do all of our cuddly little nighttime routines, right down to the music quietly playing, the books, the teddy bears, the snuggly blanket… (Although he did fall asleep in the car yesterday and I was so blissed out to not have him SCREAMING AT ME “NO, MOMMY! I SAY NO! I TAKE THE ‘NO’ TRAIN, MOMMY! KNOW WHY? CUZ I SAY NO!” (Direct quote.)

Walk me down, Jesus. I mean, help?

And Wacky Girl can’t breathe. Inhaler is helping a little. Wacky Daddy informed me last night of Report on News (so you know it’s true — ha) that stated the following: “Vacuuming doesn’t help.” Why? Because the little dust mites, the ones that make us sneeze and wheeze, are being eaten up by Bigger Version of Dust Mite, and THOSE are the ones that you vacuum up!

Fantastic news! All these years, I’ve thought I was helping her asthma by attempting to keep the house clean, and now I find I was only killing off the beneficial dust mites.

Everyone can kiss my ass. Present company excluded, of course.

love

WM

Oh — and two quotes of the day, from Wacky Mommy N:

“There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved by a
suitable application of high explosives”

OR

“I don’t have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.”

I second that emotion.