time flies

yesterday was my precious baby's second birthday. it's so cliche, but i must agree that time flies and that they grow up so fast. what other cliches? how about that he defines unconditional love?

i was in labor with the little devil for 24 hours and finally had to have an emergency c-section. that pretty much paved the road for him to be a royal pain in the ass ever since. but god, how i love him. i just can't imagine our lives without him, now. doesn't he look thrilled?

he is still a baby in our eyes. the fact is, besides his cousins (two of which live a couple thousand miles away), he has no friends. so he had no big fabulous party. there is time for spendy gimicky flashy birthday parties when he gets old enough to remember them. we had cake with the family and opened presents. he had a blast.

when he thought nobody was looking, i caught him sticking his finger into the cake and having a lick.

i planted some seeds last year

and some of them grew.

what the hell am i talking about? some astrological mumbo-jumbo. i don't know. it seemed like a good idea at the time.

i was told that any seeds, literal or figurative, planted in the time between a solar eclipse and the next full moon would be very significant to us 6 months down the road. the task was to make up a list of 100 goals or desires that the list writer would like to see come to fruition in the next year. seal up the list and don't look at it for one year. when the year has passed, look at your list and see what has "grown".

i only came up with 38, not 100. about 20 of them came to fruition. my closet was cleaned out. i have lost some weight (not all that i wanted, but about half), i am more active and exercise pretty regularly. i failed in the realm of quitting smoking and a few other things. it's very interesting to me to look back and see where my head was then, especially considering everything that i have been through in the last 12 months.

i have no clue when eclipses and full moons and such happen. i don't care one way or the other about astronomy or astrology. however, i really like this idea. i think i will sit down and create a new list of things i'd like to see myself accomplish in the next year. i hate new year's resolutions. they always seem to be grandiose and unattainable by about January 3rd.

what seeds will i plant? what seeds would you plant?

just what the half needed

a weekend to laugh myself silly, drink too much, and just generally forget the rest of my life.

a weekend with girlfriends will surely cure what ails you and in my case i want to thank everyone that was a part because it was some very very much needed therapy. love you all and can't wait to do it again!

hurricane recovery

ike came in on a friday night and saturday morning.

on thursday afternoon my husband, child, SIL and neice headed to my brother's sturdy brick apartment building where we hibernated until sunday morning. the first side of the storm was not bad for us. the eye passed over us and i thought "well, the second half shouldn't be much worse than the first. it was. or at least it seemed to be.

thanks to my brother having a generator, we watched news coverage all night and all day on friday and saturday. the kids slept but none of adults got more than a couple of hours. it was exhausting and surreal.

when we came home we had trees uprooted everywhere. thank the universe that my home had no structural damage and the rest of my family here had only minimal house damage. we spent an entire week just cutting up trees that had fallen and cleaning the yards. there is still work to be done and work in progress.

the electricity was out for a week and a day. our water was off and on for the first several days. since my father in law has a camper with a generator and air condidtioning, the whole family piled up in there each night so that we could at least get some cool sleep.

it was a shitty week. things are still shitty but i have to be grateful that things weren't any worse than they were. so many people had so much more destruction and loss than we did. my family is fine and that matters most.

we were told our elctricity could take four to six weeks to be back on and i nearly cried and kissed the linemen on the mouth when they got us back up and running when they did.

it seems odd to me that it's now late september. during the last couple of weeks my entire world has been about hurricane preparation, survival, and recovery. that there was more going on in the world besides this is almost foreign. presidential campaign? middle east crisis? huh?

i have very mixed and scattered thoughts about this whole experience. this was only my second real hurricane. i know that as long as i live here there will be more, but i could really do without them. as more things come to mind about it all, i'm sure i will spew them out here. but life goes on, it has to.

i just want to get some sleep

but my mind won't stop.

thanks to Ike, the bastard banshee of a storm, i am all uneasy.

i find myself somewhat complacent after Gustav threatened and then left us greatfully underwhelmed here. i don't want to shop tomorrow. i don't want to pack bags. i don't want to spend any amount of time hunkered down in someone else's house for safety. and mostly i don't want to worry about what shape my house will be in after the storm. IF, in fact, the storm even hits us.

gah. i laid down in bed 2 hours ago. my body is painfully exhausted. i got back up 1 hour ago becuase just laying there knowing i am not sleeping does nothing more than piss me off.

i have running lists going on, mentally. the list of things that i must take for the kid. the things that are sentimentally valuable such as photographs. the things that fall into the "important papers" category, the things i can't live without (my leave-in conditioner), the things i need to re-stock up on like drinking water and peanut butter and mindless crap magazines to help me pass the possible time with no power.

anyhow, normally when i absolutely can't sleep, i will take one single bendryl and then be comatose within 30 minutes. but now it's too late. if i take a bene now, i will end up even more groggy and exhausted tomorrow.

fucking hurricane. i don't need this shit. and it probably won't even affect us.

we are, in fact, a hurricane magnet

yet another hurricane is coming our way... maybe.

we had edouard. then we were threatened with Gustav, which thankfully changed course at the last minute and hit Louisisana rather than the northeaster Texas coast. now we have Ike brewing around in the gulf.

it was supposedly headed exactly at us yesterday but as of the weather forecasters this morning it may be hitting the southern Texas coast now.

who knows?

i am just sick to death of the anticipation. the stocking up on crap ass pre packaged foods that won't go bad if the electricity goes out. it's so stressful waiting and watching a friggin storm as if we have nothing more productive to do. really!

a 4 wheelin' we will go

my sweet boy will turn 2 at the end of september. he is a very very large 23 month old. he is a monster and he has earned the nickname sasquatch among some.

my son's grandpa (Papa) bought him an early birthday present. Papa and Mimi have been talking about getting him a Power Wheels vehicle of some sort since he fist took an interest in his cousin's pink power wheels harley davidson.

yesterday after nap time Mimi and Papa called us over to their house - they live next door, remember. we go over and there on the patio is a shiney blue power wheels 4 wheeler. little man's eyes got as big as saucers. after a couple of minutes of eye balling it, he was in love and had to try it out.

he can't steer yet. and i am not sure if he 100% understands that the pedal to push with his foot is what makes it go and to stop he must pick up his foot, but nonetheless, he LOVES it.

what a lucky family we are. lucky to have such a sweet kid. lucky that our child has such wonderfully loving and generous grandparents who live right next door.

this is him late last evening. his eyes show how tired he is. but isn't he precious? (i know i'm not least little bit biased).