Florida or Bust: Day One

Flashlight?  Check!  Huge mess in the living room?  Check!

Here we are, one day out of Massachusetts!  Maddie's been excited about going to Florida for weeks now and got all naked today so she could go swimming in the ocean.  We had to explain that the ocean was still a ways off but that we'd be seeing Aunt Anna and Uncle Nick in New Jersey tonight.  That held her until we stopped for gas and I asked her if she wanted to go inside with her Daddy and she said, "To go swimming in the ocean?"

Not the ocean, but ice cream with Daddy is good, too

Maddie and I both have colds and Nathaniel anticipates getting one shortly but we're all in great moods.  I really love road tripping with Nathaniel-- we get silly pretty quick when we're cooped up together in the car.  Sonja is the perfect age for traveling, as long as we keep her on schedule.  And we have built up an army of defenses to deal with Maddie.

I turn up my nose at having a DVD player in the car but we really have a ton of electronics up front.  There's Mrs. GPS, who has adopted an English accent for this outing; N's iPodTouch, my iPod nano, cell phone, and stereo.  And we just picked up an iPod speaker pillow, neon orange, at the New Jersey mall.  This is so Maddie can listen to the four hours (4!) of stories that are on my iPod.  One hour of which we recorded together before we left.

Also: Maddie pooped in the potty for the first time this morning!  She's been peeing really well but now she's branching out!  Hurray!

The girls with their Auntie-- they're so lucky to have her and so are we!  

Thanks Anna and Nick!

Oh my god.  I just started fantasizing about having a little baby boy!  Sonja isn't even 3 months old yet!  Jesus Christ.  And  I know I won't stop thinking about it until I'm pregnant again.  IUD, here I come.  I need to be stopped.

I bought a new pillow for the couch today and Cooper is now on it, shedding.  That's why everything I buy is chocolate brown.

Maddie and Sonja and I found ourselves with a free morning so we went to town and hung out at Rite Aid!  Whoopie!  On the way there we were listening to NPR and they advised us that if we wanted more information on something we should go to somethingsomething.com.   The "dot com" part of that suggestion really stuck with Maddie and she kept yelling, "Dot com, dot com," all morning.  Then, "Mommy dot com!"  (Which would actually take you here, where's there's a suggestion to check the batteries in your smoke detector, but joke's on them-- we took ours out because the wood stove always sets it off.)

I would pay $20.00 to take a really hot bath and then nap right now.  But instead I'm going to get up and get Maddie up from her too short nap and get all my stuff ready for McKee School.  And Sonja!  Please, let's not forget Sonja!  I will get her ready to go, too.  

There's no point in having a Christmas without children.  It's so much more impossibly fun with kids around.  They don't even get what's going on but we enjoy trying to make it meaningful for them.  We put a tree in our house and lit it up and Maddie just took it in stride, like we always have a tree in the living room.  

Matthew took us out to cut the tree down and he took his kids out, too, and it was so frickin' cold and Myra fell down and smashed her knee on some ice and it was the kind of cold where your face just can't take it and Matthew gave up and didn't get a tree.  But we had bundled our kids up and my man chopped down a beautiful tree and we dragged it back to our cave.

***********************

I'm so devastated that The Daily Show won't be on until after the New Year, because I need to know what Jon (and his writers) think of that guy who threw a shoe at Bush in Iraq.  Dude threw a shoe at him!  Both of his shoes!  But then he got beaten and kicked by Iraqi security and Bush called it democracy.  Poor guy.  I know it's an immature way to make a point or express yourself, but that guy is my hero.  

************************

Sonja is getting baptized today.  Pictures to follow...

  

I spent about two hours by myself on Sunday, running errands.  I haven't been by myself in over two months.  It was amazing how much easier it was to get stuff done.  I just got into and out of the car.  No unbuckling car seats or strapping a baby to me while another car tries to pull in alongside me.  No squirming bottoms trying to get out of the grocery cart or eat the butter while we're in line.  No giant car seat full of infant to lug through the parking lot!  It was good.  I'd like to say, "But also kind of sad," but I just can't.  The girls were with their Oma, Maddie asleep, Sonja full of milk, and they were fine.  I wasn't sad, I was free.  

*****************

Rod Blagojevich!  What the hell is wrong with you?  Getting him elected is one of my first SEIU memories.  Jackass.  We were so happy!  And I have the pen he used to sign a bill into law making it legal for healthcare workers in state hospitals to organize by signing cards.  What the hell is that called?  Jesus, I forgot what that's called, I can't believe it.  Anyway, I organized the first wall-to-wall hospital in the state of Illinois and the first RN union for SEIU under that law and got the damn pen.  I organized that place so fast, they didn't even have any paperwork for me to file with.  Those were the days.  Now this turkey turns out to be just as corrupt as his Republican predecessor!  George at least made it out of office before getting arrested!  Stupid governors.  They are not having a red-letter year.

******************

We're lighting a tree before dinner tonight.  At least, I hope it will light.  We have to sing loudly enough and sincerely enough to inspire the tree to light up.  

CARD CHECK!  It is called CARD CHECK!  Goddamn it, I remembered, I'm not losing my mind after all.  It is called card check when the majority of the workers sign cards to form their union.    

Had a spectacularly bad fight today (taught Maddie how to say, "Shut up") and did a small bit of cleaning.  What did we fight over?  Nathaniel asked me not to leave the wet sponge in the sink after washing dishes because it smells bad and gets bacteria-y.  And he implied that me leaving the wet sponge in the sink was the reason he never does dishes.  Only, he called "never" "rarely".  I felt that I never do leave a wet sponge in the sink and that it was unfair to fault me for there being a wet sponge in the sink just then.  (Rather unfortunate timing on the sponge's part.)  And somehow Maddie learned to say, "Shut up" to her Dad.  Not great. 

Thursdays kick my ass.  

Yet, here I am, one window full of blog, another full of Jon Stewart.  Nathaniel is down at a meeting about brain plasticity (he won the "your turn to do something fun" night) and the girls are both in bed and the pets are fed.  Wow.  Did I just rhyme that?  

I accidently watched "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" last night.  "Accidently?" you ask.  I was on the verge of actually getting a good night's sleep when I sat next to Nathaniel for a second and put my head on his shoulder and he opened up his laptop to check how his "perfectly legal" downloads were progressing.  And when he opened up the "Z & M Make a P" file to check the quality of the bootlegged video, neither one of us ever shut it off and I never got up.  It was awful.  And defied all logic that a beautiful, non-crazy, good actress would fall in love with Seth Rogan.  He is so gross.

Alright, I finished Jon Stewart and now I must pay attention to Stephen Colbert.  I'm watching on Nathaniel's laptop because my computer is busted.  AHHHHH!  No more pictures or movies!