Wow you guys are demanding about this blog. Its great you read it, believe me I love seeing how many clicks it gets in a day, but Damn! Texting me, calling me, sending email messages about when is a new one coming and if "you don't write one every day my life will suddenly lose all focus and my nail polish will chip and my plants will wilt!" If it were only up to me I would save both your nail polish and your plants, but its not. At least not entirely. There are a plethora (Love that word) of things that sometimes make it impossible for me to get words from my brain, out my fingers and onto this big white page. Sometimes it is the big white page itself. It sits there and mocks me with its whiteness. It glows in its pristine glory, taunting me with the fact that NOTHING is in my head. (go ahead with the jokes you know you want to). Sometimes I think of a subject but it has no flow, no waaaaa, no chi. (good lord) And of course, you can't write if there is no waaaaaaa.

Speaking of waaaaaaa (of a different kind, picture a kid who DOESN'T get to watch "just ooonnneee more SpongeBob) that's another reason I don't sit down and churn a blog out every day. Strangely, that five year old Sydney person that lives in my house sometimes requires inordinate amount of care, what with cooking dinner, washing clothes, and, ahem, cleaning up large amounts of cat food and pasta so at the end of it all that couch is looking mighty good. Maybe I should bring the couch into the office. The desk is too heavy to move.

Then there is the somewhat astonishing fact that I have a life outside my house where my computer cannot follow. (thank god, cause that would just look weird). And when I get home from the carnal debauchery of Red Robin, Islands, or (god forbid) Chuck E Cheese I am again too tired to write and instead make fast friends with my couchy. (and the T.V., I love my t.v. in front of my couchy)

Also, since I have to leave the house before the sun rises for my epic journey to the office, like Cinderella, only earlier, I have to be in bed by 10:30 or I turn, not into a pumpkin, but well, a bitch. (stop it, I already gave you one with the nothing in my brain). So that leaves only a few hours a night to be mom, maid, pet parent, laundress, AND brilliant, nail polish plant saving humorist. I suppose wife should fit in there too, but who has time for that?

But most importantly, sometimes I just don't feel funny and I vowed that if I was going to subject people to a blog it was going to be light and funny, no politics, no religion, and no discussions on the plight of the standard american poodle in the wake of the popularity of its teacup sized cousin. No, I will keep it light! But sometimes you feel like a nut. And sometimes you don't.

:)

"Kids will Change Your Life"

You know how, before you have kids everyone tells you that having them will change your lives? Saying only that its life changing is like saying that electroshock therapy is going sting a bit. I mean really people, a little more warning than the simple "oh, kids are life changing" would have been nice! Even if it was accompanied by a smugly superior look. (That's very annoying by the way)

First they are babies and are undeniably adorable. But they have to be. Or least we have to see them that way. That very adorableness triggers instincts in grown ups that turns spit up on shirts, fifteen poopy diapers a day, and two hours of sleep a night into something, if, well not desirable, at least tolerated. Without those cuteness suspectible genes we all have, lots of babies would find themselves back at the hospital from which they came, complete with a dirty diaper and their full complement of car seat, baby carrier, stroller, bottles, nipples, diapers, baby wipes, butt powders, shaky, crinkly toy thing, and 500 onsies with those annoying and impossible snaps between the legs. (Nothing like being kicked in the face by a squirming baby while trying to get them snapped).

Then they get older and turn two, or in some case only 18 months and its like a demon has invaded your cute, cuddly child. Only now since its been so long, you love this thing completely and so now also must love the demon. Yea! It throws things, it lays on the floor and screams, completely oblivious to other shoppers, diners, cars in the parking lot or the sensitive hearing of your two doors down and across the street neighbors cat. The demon controlling what used to be your child says NO for everything. Do you want to get dressed. NO. Will you eat your spaghetti? NO. Will you please stop throwing your dirty diaper at Mommy? NO NO NO. Splat.

And still, through all of this you hug them and kiss them and buy them candy (demons love candy, it gives them lots of energy for those big murals on your dining room wall!), you think about their wants and needs before yours and you acquire that pale, haunted, glassy eyed look of someone whose "life has changed a little". You remember (when you have time to think at all between snacks, bottles, getting that dead weight in and out of the car seat, picture books, potty training, and trying to convince your 2 year old not to eat the wallpaper) when life was all about something else. Whatever it was. You went to movies and you ate out at restaurants without worrying about someone crawling around under the table touching old gum or if the person next to you was going to throw boogers at the people the next booth.

Then they are five and they teeter on the edge of being real people. People with whom you can have an actual conversation, who sometimes care about things outside themselves and for a brief and shining moment you think, "Phew" and you see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And then they take that open bag of cat food and an open bag of pasta and they make like crop dusters all over their room, making sure that no inch of floor space, no hidden recesses of any drawer, shelf or corner is left without attention. The window sills look bumpy, the floor is crunchy, and the sheets smell like cat food. Even the ceiling has smudges. But after the yelling, and the cleaning up and the meteing out of whatever the punishment, even though you are so angry you could easily strangle them in their sleep, when you feel their little hand on your face, asking for your forgiveness you crumble and hug them and rock them to sleep and you realize that all those people were right after all, your life did change and despite it all, it is so desperately better!

Pet-Aholics Anonymous

I wonder if there is a 12 step program for pet aquirers. Cause we now live in a three bedroom ranch style house with three human types, two reclusive hermit crabs, one ridiculously cute but smelly hamster and THREE cats. This morning when I woke up and looked around my life I was very happy with my two other humans, my two crabs, my one hamster and my two cats. Everybody was getting along, everyone had food and water (including the humans) and there was an unspoken balance. Not once during the morning of reading the paper, making coffee, watching SpongeBob (a DAILY ritual in my house) did I ever think to myself, "hmmmm, self, there is something missing here and it surely must be another cat". And yet.....

In my defense I come from animal people. Stop that. I don't mean "animal people" I mean people who have animals. Have any of you ever seen the movie Cat People? Very strange and has nothing to do with anything in this current topic it just popped into my head.

So anyway, animal people. Growing up we had dogs and cats and horses. I wasn't allowed anything small and manageable that lived in a cage but the sky was the limit on things that cost a fortune to feed, or left dead mouse guts at the foot of your bed, or that you had to spend a couple hours a week cleaning up after. At one point in my life, I shared a twin sized bed with a 160 pound slobbering puppy of a dog and a 20 pounds tomcat. If I wanted to go to the bathroom I had to shimmy out from between them, throw a leg over the dog and try not to knee the cat in the face. Then do it all in reverse to get back in. Its a wonder I didn't just give up and sleep on the floor, except they would have followed me down there too.

Since I am constrained from getting a dog in this house and since a horse would find our backyard a bit of a bore, I apparently try to fill the holes this leaves in my soul with little animals. Like a pet jigsaw puzzle. Cat here, next to the crab, the crab next to the hamster and stuff all rest of the spaces with more cats, another crab and in the future a fish.

A fish? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I bribed Sydney to go to my parents for a week by promising that Grandma would get her a fish. And a tank. That she could bring home with her.

In my defense, Sydney needs a friend in the house to play with (she has some very good friends outside the house but for some reason their parents want them to continue living at their own homes). The crabs are interesting (the once or twice they actually move during any seven day period), the hamster, while friendly and cuddly, will NOT stay on her bed or let her dress him up in her Build a Bear ballerina costume, and the other two cats? Lets say that while everyone in that little triad is on speaking terms, no one would call the other "friend". And if I'm asked when she can have a little brother again....

So when we went to Petsmart today to buy the giant bag of cat food, the crab pellets and the big bag of hamster bedding and Sydney picked up this kitten, walked around with it and showed it things, and I couldn't stop myself. I just couldn't. So $120.00 later, armed with a yet bigger bag of cat food, some new cat toys, a new cat bowl and a very happy kid we are now nine instead of eight and in two weeks we will be a nice round ten.


A 12 step program is definately looming in my future. Hi, I'm LeeAnn and I'm a pet-aholic.