I'm so white trash

Due to my inlaws backing out on us for Thanksgiving in favor of her family, we were left with no plans. This was great in that I didn't have to cook again, but unfortunate that we had no plans. So we decided to order pizza. It turns out that despite the fact that I worked on Thanksgiving at Pizza Hut as a teenager, they are in fact closed. So Piglet and I went out in search of fast food on Thanksgiving night.

Being that it was 65 degrees, I put Piglet in the car without jacket or shoes. I won't even describe my appearance. We were merely headed for a drive thru. As luck would have it, nothing is open around here except for a Waffle House and a grocery store. I just couldn't face another turkey sandwich (remember, we had Fakesgiving last Saturday, so I'm on Day 6 of turkey), so I headed to the grocery store.

It was halfway through the store when I paused to assess my situation. I looked at Piglet - no shoes, dirty pants, belly hanging out of shirt, crust on face, yelling, "Gooooooooo!" and felt a bit embarrassed. It was only when I checked myself out in my house cleaning sweat suit, napped upon ponytail, and bandage where I half cut my finger off that I felt pretty WT. I'm sure the fact that I was gripping two frozen pizzas and a 6 pack of Bud Light while pushing a stroller didn't help.

It was really one of my better moments. My mom would be proud.

Why oh why?

Why didn't I sign up for gas service with this company? I mean, I would look forward to getting a bill with their slogan on it: Gas South - Get Comfortable. It makes me laugh everytime I see a commercial. Surely I'm not the first person to think that?

You Write the Caption:

Who can get closest to the real event? Winner takes all.

Hairy balls.

Have you ever been to Target with a two year old? And a 5 month old? And me? Because it seems to be a disastrous combination thus far. Here's how it plays out:

Set house alarm and head out to garage. Do not open garage door, because Piglet will run away. Instead, he rushes to toolbox to get screwdriver with which to "fix" daddy's lawnmower. Let him while strapping in Pigpen to carseat. Pigpen has learned to arch back and buck like a bronco when put into carseat, so this takes a moment.

Return to Piglet. He is now under lawnmower, pulling broom and dustpan from behind it. "Piglet sweep floor!"Drag him out, wrestle him into jacket while he cries and does noodle legs in his tantrum over the broom. Heft him into car, bumping his head on the way. Wailing ensues. "Mommy kiss it! Mommy kiss it!" Kiss it.

Peel off own jacket due to sweating. Drive to Target, maintaining energetic conversation about tractors, school buses and garbage trucks. At each turn, Piglet yells, "Piglet wants go other way!" At red lights he yells, "Goooooo!" The sun is in Pigpen's face. He cries. Notice we are not yet at Target.

Find parking place as close to cart return as possible. Bring cart to car. Wrench cart cover thinger onto cart, weaving seat belt straps through fabric. Am now cold from earlier sweating. Hoist Piglet into cart. He refuses to put feet in holes. Try not to smack Piglet so I don't look like white trash woman smacking kid in parking lot. Shove feet in holes and squeeze the seat belt around fat toddler belly with slack all the way let out. (These are never large enough, but Piglet stands in carts and can climb out of back) Tell him to suck it in. He instead blows into my face and laughs hysterically.

Wheel Piglet over to Pigpen's side and park cart while I slip into my Baby Bjorn. Just as I'm halfway strapped in, Piglet shoves off of car and sends cart rolling into parking lot. Grab him and have serious in face talk about what happens if a car hits him. There are a lot of shots and bandaids in the warning. Child acts brain damaged.

Get Pigpen securely fastened in Bjorn and dare old lady walking by to say anything about him not wearing a hat. Remember purse and go back to car. Enter Target at last. There were a good many people in there and anytime the cart slowed behind someone, Piglet would call out either, "Go now!" or "Move!" Humiliating. We did okay until I picked up a pack of Elmo underwear for Piglet. We are in the talking-about-it stage of potty training right now. He wanted to tell all of the people that we passed about his Elmo unkies. To distract him, I let him pick out a toy with the $5 his grandparents sent him for Thanksgiving. (Pigpen got spoons)

Have you ever tried explaining the concept of $5 to a two year old who can only count to three and thinks you're supposed to hit a ball or jump in the air on three? Hopeless. We wound up with one of those rubbery balls with all the hairy things sticking out of it. It's called a hair ball. This would be fine for the normal child. Piglet, though, likes to give a running commentary of his life to the general public. Have you ever walked through Target with a two year old yelling, "Piglet has hairy ball!" from your cart? HAVE YOU?? People were openly laughing.

I hustled out of there and out to the car where I reversed the procedure to get them in the car again. Upon lifting Pigpen from the Bjorn, my bra came unhooked. That's right, just came unhooked. If the loosey goosey feeling didn't clue me in, the nursing pads falling to the ground in the parking lot surely did. Then, if you've been keeping up with this blog, you know what happened next....my milk let down. And here it came. Right there in the parking lot.

So, there you have it. A trip to Target with little people. Those of you without kids, please enjoy your next trip alone to Target in my honor.

Rant

Good news! Pigpen slept through the night last night! I'm pretty sure I'm probably jinxing it by talking about it, especially on a public forum like this, but nonetheless, he did it and it made us happy. This is almost exactly the age that Piglet did it too, perhaps my babies are pre-programmed to sleep through at 5 months.

I have such wee scrawny babies that they seem to take a while to get there. Well, they started out biggish, 8 and 9 pounds, but then they are slow growers. Pigpen is clinging to the bottom rung of that growth chart at 12 pounds 3 oz. Tall and skinny, that one.

What drives me insane is when people from a different generation only believe in formula feeding, putting rice cereal in baby bottles at one month, and putting babies to sleep on their stomachs make snide remarks about the way we do things in this day and age. (COUGH! Mother-in-law! Cough!)

Some people feel that if I gave him a bottle full of cereal before bed, he'd sleep through the night and Mr. Pigs could get some sleep. Did you catch that? Mr. Pigs. Because you know, he's the one sitting up nursing this baby at night. You know, he has to get up early to go to his real job. Since it's been proven that cereal will not in any way help them sleep longer, I'm not sure which statement is more idiotic.

Whew. That's a load off. I've always refrained from MIL bashing on this blog, but she's coming this weekend and I'm not sure I can refrain much longer. You want to talk about blog fodder? This woman is unbelievable. It's amazing that I've managed to keep my twitchy typing fingers quiet this long. Perhaps more will come.

In the meantme, look! Two days in a row! It's a new leaf for Pigs.

Health Trifecta. I like the word trifecta.

So this finger thing is mighty inconvenient. I've gotten fairly good at typing with 9 fingers, but haven't figured out a good way to do dishes or give baths. Or wash my right armpit. Too much information? Probably, but you're reading my blog and that's just how I roll.

What was interesting was that I couldn't stop at cutting my finger off. No, no....that wasn't enough. A day or two after The Incident my back spasmed. Froze. Stiffened. Stove up, as Mr. Pigs likes to say. This was probably a result of holding my body so stiff while trying not to writhe on the doctor's table as he cut off a chunk of my finger. So....there I was, minus a finger and semi-paralyzed. It's hard to feed a baby when you can't look down at them, I tell ya. Pigpen probably thought my face disappeared with my finger.

Being the paranoid alarmist that I am, I immediately decided that my stiff neck was a sure sign of bacterial meningitis, no doubt a result of The Incident. I am never taken seriously in this concern, as Mr. Pigs swears that I "get" meningitis at least 5 or 6 times a year. He's going to feel bad one day if I really get it.

As a compulsive handwasher, it's been tough on me to have to rely on antibacterial wipes for my sanitizing needs. Guess what? It's not enough. My cold started creeping in Wednesday night. The annoying sore throat led to some mild coughing. Guess what coughing did to my meningitis? Ack! Seized up the back again! Thank goodness my parents came into town to help prepare for our family's Fakesgiving for 12 people at my house.

The good news is that it all seems to be on the mend. The finger is shedding stringy, gooey bits of dead skin and oozing bloody goo. The back has loosened up nicely after copious amounts of stretching and hot showers (not getting the finger wet, of course.) The cold seems to be being beaten into submission by my patented Zicam/Airborne combo, but the sore throat lingers.

So, all that said, I've kind of got an itch to start blogging more. I've been terrible since Pigpen's birth and the big move, but kind of miss it. I think there's a chance I may have lost many of my readers, though, so pump me up about this quest. I'm ready. I feel it. I'm there!

Oops.

Sorry for the lack of posting of late. It seems that I have, um, cut off the end of my index finger. Technically not the end, I suppose. More of the fingerprint. Most of it. It turns out that making sweet potato chips is something of a dangerous job.

See Exhibit A:

It seems that when one uses a potato slicer on one's finger, it does not create a stitchable wound. No, no. The doctor seemed to quite enjoy taking his little scissors and snipping my finger off. It fell to the table with a soft, meaty thud. I felt it. There was no novacaine and it was fairly gnarly. He was kind enough, after stopping the excessive bleeding with some sort of protein clotting pad, to ask if I'd like to keep my finger. I declined and accepted my bandaging.

(See Exhibit B):

Sigh. Typing is slow. I'll try to get on more regularly.

* * * * * *

So, upon review it seems I may have forgotten blocked out some aspects of the event. For instance, I forgot to mention that when the event happened, I looked down to see the front of my finger, the pad if you will, hanging off of the end of my finger and had to flip it back into place before wrapping it with paper towels and then telling Mr. Pigs. (He doesn't deal with blood or injury at all.) I also thought I'd follow up with a blood and gore shot to take care of any confusion:

ps - Let me know if you'd like my recipe for sweet potato chips, sans fingers. They're awfully good.

Official Notice:

I declare henceforth that I will hereby be referring to Little Piggie by his new bloglegal name, Pigpen. An error was made in the original blognaming of the child prior to the realization that he is a rather stinky, odoriferous child. Therefore, future references to the previously called "Little Piggie" will be specified as "Pigpen".



It is difficult to fathom that this fuzzy-headed, gummy-grinned, cute as a bug's ear, specimen is in fact as smelly as a goat. Wee Pigpen has man-sized green foggy gas that can clear a room in 2.6 seconds. Who is left sitting there? The nursing mother, that's who. This precious little bundle of giggles already has smelly feet. And they actually smell like feet - real, "I've been playing basketball in 4 day old socks" feet. Even his head has its own unique scent. I always rather liked it until I realized he was the stinky kid and Eddie told me that my house was starting to smell like his head. Now I just have Pigpen. It's a good thing I think he's cute.

Can you imagine the stench of his teenage years? I'm hoping that the fastidious cleaning nature of Piglet will help keep Pigpen under control. Or at least bathed.

Pigs on Politics

As you know, with the exception of my rants about No Child Left Behind, I'm not one to talk about politics much. You know I have the thing about thinking I'm offending people or whatever, so I'd rather just not say too much. But today, I think I will because people are annoying me and you know that I do not like to be annoyed.

I think it's pretty darn awesome for our country that we have come far enough to elect a black man to the highest office of power in the country. No matter what your political views are, you should have the common sense to recognize that. I personally did not vote for Obama, but am still excited for his win. Is that totally bizarre? I don't think so. I was somewhere in between the candidates, but voted what fit me best. My guy didn't win, but that's kind of how this game works.

This is the part I don't think people understand. I'm going to try to put it into simple terms for all of the hateful idiots out there who can't get over themselves. You don't get your way all the time. America was founded on the idea of Democracy, which means people get to vote. Everybody gets one vote. If you used yours, good for you! You did your part. On Sesame Street the other day, Elmo and Zoe learned about voting to decide what song they were going to sing. They were torn between Row Row Row Your Boat and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. They took a vote, and guess what? The song with the most votes got to be sung. So we're going to sing Obama for the next four years and you need to suck it up and try to find the good. It is completely counter-productive to argue about it. You can't deny that he's got people excited again. I heard that 14 million more people voted this year than the last Presidential election. That's a whole mess of people.

Another little aspect I'd like to mention is this: Things can't always be one way. That's kind of the point of this country. I think politics swinging back and forth over time is what keeps this country balanced and in the middle. You have to share, people. Other things have to swing too though. For instance, the economy cannot always be grand. What goes up must come down. Free enterprise and capitalism and all that. Let it take care of itself and quit blaming everybody and pointing fingers. Which brings me to my next rambling point.

George Bush did not personally cause all of the problems in the world. In the same vein, if you do not care for Obama, he is also not going to be able to personally do anything either. Flashback to high school civics: there are 3 branches of government and a little thing they call checks and balances. Look into it. And then be quiet. I think the folks that figured all this stuff out back in the 1700s were darn crafty and the system has worked for quite a long time. They were clever, clever little founders. Let's respect the process and be glad we have it and quit whining because your guy lost.

As I mentioned before, my guy lost too, but I'm going to support the new President who won fair and square and not repeat what I've seen from Bush-haters over the last 4-8 years. There's plenty to like about him, mostly that this should be an opportunity to bring the country together, not tear it apart. Which brings me to a gripe.

A vast amount of Obama's votes came from white citizens, particularly young ones. I heard on the radio 62% of his votes were from white people, but I can't find that written anywhere to be sure. I also read in the AJC this morning that black voter turn out was basically unaffected by this election. So why is it that the media - at least in my area - is only showing black celebrations as though he is the President for the Black Folks? This seems so distorted to me because he is so favored by so many people of all colors and genders, why not let people come together on something? Is it just to create hype and get people all grouchy and mean so they have something to talk about on the news? I'd love to hear an answer on this one.

In the meantime, give him the chance to prove himself, let's see what he's got. If you still don't like him in four years, guess what? There will be another election and you can vote again. You might win, you might not. Things might swing again, who knows? You gotta respect the process and quit being so HATEFUL! (Especially on Facebook - you people have got to get a grip.)

This concludes the 2008 message of Pigs on Politics.

Dear Texas,

This is what fall looks like:








And this is how we play in it:





We miss our friends, but not the one day fall event of North Texas!

Love,
Pigs

ps - And that's just in my yard!

Do Mommy's!

Piglet: Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! [giggles]

Piglet has realized that when he sticks his finger in his snotty nostril it makes a fun squeaking sound.

Piglet: Squeak! Squeak! [He tries the other side.]

I am no longer able to maintain a straight face. I burst into laughter and tell him he's nuts. He is so pleased with my reaction that he decides to take it one step further.

He comes at me with his shiny, snotty finger.

"Do mommy's!"