Haiku Friday - gadgets

Today I brought home
something I can't yet make work
a new Blackberry

My daughter saw it
and with a gleam in her eye
said "OH, is that yours?"

Lord Honey's cheap phone
has better built in ring tones
that make Hannah dance.

But I have something
I've not much needed before
the freckle button!

Join us here for more haiku links.

Hey, did ya happen to see the most beautiful girls in the world?

It was around the time of the pork

My dentists can be kept in business with patients like me. I know I bought one guy a boat that he absolutely did not deserve. My jaw is killing me, and here I am with a rising bridge and a tooth nearby and a something something all inflamed and unhappy. I told my husband about my grief and he said he had a similar problem a few days ago. "It was around the time of the pork." "Are we now tracking our days by the food we eat?" I asked. "Well, that kind of food anyway." The chop kind of food? The dinner at home kind of food? The fact that pork is not a verb kind of food? "Was the pork chop, like, super aggressive? How do you know it was the pork?" I asked? (thinking about the t-bone steak I couldn't stop eating tonight although I've been in pain for days). Lord Honey talked me into trying tea tree oil on the gum of the sore tooth, and flossing it in with manly I-don't-go-to-the-dentist-strokes. Frackin' nasty! But if it keeps me from buying toys for dentists then so be it, I can be a pseudo hippie. If it works, we'll look back and say it was around the time of the t-bone.

Friday Haiku the pretty, slobbery dictator

A second new tooth
for my wee Hannah baby
costs me some good sleep.

We still call her Fang
because it is so much fun
her being so pretty

and yet slobbery
She also learned how to point,
tells us what she wants.

Every week Christina at A Mommy Story plays host to bloggers who love Haiku Friday - join us!

Today is appreciate my husband day

Except that I accidentally read a blog wherein the blogger had a rant about the unequal division of labor at her house in regards to her husband and the many duties that go along with childrearing, I've been feeling rather pleasant towards Lord Honey today. After I read that blog entry I had to come put this disclaimer on the post I was writing earlier, because, hey, I don't want to like, lie, or fudge the truth, or be less than honest just because this is on the internet, and all. He really doesn't do anything like 50% of the stuff that gets done. Nope. But . . .

Today is be nice to Lord Honey day because he is as we speak, doing work on my parents' house, and he won't be mean later. Not at all.

My parents are not tidy. They are not clean. There are levels and layers of dirt at their house that most people would only see in nightmares. They are trail people. I don't mean they go up and down trails for exercise, I mean there are trails in their house that run between the stacks of things, generally books and periodicals, but all in peril of tipping over. Under the books you can find some general filth and perhaps some old stuff. Under the old stuff will be some other stuff you can't quite identify. As kids, we only invited over people who were also "bookish" since we thought they were the least likely to notice the rest of the story. I can always win the prize in the popular party game "my mother was even crazier than your mother." It hasn't gotten better as they age.

Lord Honey is a professional remodeler, and I am certain he has seen things in other people's homes that are also scary like my parents' house, but he is too nice to talk people down behind their backs. Not like me. So today, when he will help my aging father replace some faucets and do some other plumbing and try to avoid eating any food prepared there, he will be sweet and kind and gentle with my people. So I have to appreciate him today, even if only behind his back, for not telling me anything remarkable about being at their home without me. Today, I will be glad is the strong, silent, and kindly type. Whew. Now back to regular programming. Shhhh. Don't tell.

Why some girls just need to go to a salon

OK, nothing on my schedule so I'll dye my own hair and save myself the big salon fee.

Lord Honey says to me: just don't stain the new bathtub.
Me: Oh no, I'll be careful.
LH: Why not just go to the hairdresser?
Me: Oh I am not loving the fees I pay and the hours I spend doing it and having to schedule it what with work, the baby's appointments, etc. and now that I had that allergic reaction to professional stuff and I had to get my own special plant based no PPD brand, I might as well make a break from the salon.
LH: If I have to replace the bathtub, the tile goes too. Be careful of the grout.
Me: OK, OK, it will be fine.

LH leaves with the girls and I set up. Planning for a mess I try to get all my ducks in a row. Clear the counter by the sink from extra stuff, put old dark towels on the floor, carefully clip my hair into sections and drape the towel around my neck.

OK here we go. Mix bottle one and bottle two. Oooh, looky, its so dark. I hope it is a nice red to cover my gray, my fake red, and my roots with an even color. Ok, start with the hair in the back section. Oops, there goes a squirt over my shoulder! No matter, I put down towels. Hey this isn't too hard. Oops, another glob. Now, where did that go? I just stepped in it. No matter, I put down towels. Ok, now the side sections. Good thing I used the gloves, this is really dark. Maybe I better drape the new marble vanity or Lord Honey will be unhappy. Better stop a sec. Hey, what is that all over the door? Well, the package said to wipe it off a sink with soap and water. I bet it comes off OK. Finish glooping in. Hmm, package says not to massage, just life it up from the roots with applicator comb. Wow, that sure makes the globs fly upward, I'll stroke down instead. NO DOG! Do not come in, goddammit! You will not track hair dye all over this house, just go lie the fuck down somewhere. OK, all done, put on the wee shower cap and use the heat. Hmm, maybe I should clean up first. Arrgghh the shoulder towel slips to the floor and lands on the other towels. OK, I'll just step on those. I'll use this stain guard for my hairline product from the dye package to remove the dye from the toilet, wall and door. Hmm, not coming off the toilet seat. Hey, kind of looks like a pee stain. Toilets seats don't cost much. I bet I can get the door clean though. Fuck! What is this shit, a solvent? How can something that is citrus based stain guard made to keep my ears dye free be able to take paint off a door? Oh, Lord Honey will not be pleased. I'll just bend over and wipe it off the floor though, hey, that drop came up! What the fuck - did I really just brush my head covered in dye against the door? Oh, thank God for the shower cap thingy. Lord Honey would not love hair prints on the door. Shit! None of this is coming off anything! I wonder where Lord Honey keeps the white paint? Can I coat the door once before he gets home? I bet my hair will be really dark too. Oh wait! The application of heat in five minute increments! OK, use hairdryer, then clean or paint. OK, gloves off, I'll turn them inside out and not make any messes. Hell, how do I get those back on to rinse? OK, wait, check feet, wipe off wet glob. Use solvent. Hmm, this means the bathtub with its acrylic surface is a bad bet. OK, go clean the kitchen sink so I can rinse over real porcelain. Stand on stool to make sure I am going to be tall enough to really bend head into sink when the rinsing starts and keep splashing to a minimum. Hey, I am thinking now - move kitchen sink rug so stool won't slide away from sink while leaning in to rinse. I am not stupid! Ha-ha, I will conquer after all. Five minutes more with dryer. Use gentle hippie cleanser on door and remove more paint. Find surprise drip down behind the towels on towel rack, on the new yellow painted bead board. Fuckity fuck fuck. I really can't paint this over and expect to fool Lord Honey, hell, he is a professional. Five minutes under dryer. OK, I will get this part right and carefully swish the dryer in an even pattern covering whole head for exactly five minutes, as directed. I can do this. Back to front, back to front, side to side, side to side, left to right - hey was that the phone? I'll go see. Hmm, I thought I got on the do not call list, back to the dryer. The dryer won't turn on. I have another dryer, in the armoire. Dad blast it did I just touch my head to the door of the antique armoire?? Ahh, the shower cap. Why am I such a doofus? And I have no clue where the paint stuff is. And if I go down the stairs I'll probably trip and the shower cap might come off and I'll ruin the new carpet and the paint job. I better just confess to Lord Honey and let him fix the paint, in a manly sort of way that will let him feel superior. Rrrrggh. I'll try again with the gentle hippie cleanser. Damn gentle hippies. At least they made this nice plant based hair dye without petrochemicals. I hope it is stronger than hippie cleanser. OK, rinse time. Look, its going darkly down the sink but not staining! Hooray! I don't suck entirely.

Let's check the hair. Coppery red, nice, and the roots? What is that? Is that gray? Nearly as much gray as I had before? Before I dyed all my towels and the bathroom? It can't be. I dyed my gray. I did.

Haiku Friday - my summer look

My roots an inch long
I now am looking so gray
Then see the freckles!

A bad reaction
to all hair dye chemicals
left me scrambling

Waiting on a plant
based dye without PPD
shipped from a distance

Love the internet
gets me things without shopping
no me in mirrors!

My new sandals make
my pedicure fail stand out
so I wore the old

By next week I will
Look so much better, good hair
makes my butt look small.


Every week Christina at A Mommy Story plays host to bloggers who love Haiku Friday - join us!

Her corn storage was full

Six hours at the pediatric ER in the middle of the night to find out her corn storage was full. Now, that is not what the doctor said, but they were so damn unreliable that I had to make my own diagnosis.

A few years ago my sister and I realized by observing that since all vomit contains corn, vomiting must be caused when one's corn storage gets to capacity. Hannah's corn storage got full about 1:00 a.m. on Saturday night. We woke to the sound of the gak (something a little like the call of the wild, not a sound you can easily ignore) and of course I panicked out the outset, since MCADD kids are supposed to be seen at a hospital upon any vomiting or diarrhea since they can decompensate very quickly when blood sugar goes out of whack. I knew she had eaten a meal between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m., not all of which came out as corn, so I knew we had some leeway, but as soon as we changed her to a fresh set of jams and bedclothes we got round two. I knew then we were going to the ER, and Lord Honey would stay behind with the other kidlets. A small barf number three convinced me to leave (and might have made me go through a red light or two when I had stopped and identified that no one else was on the road). Of course I cried when Hannah wasn't looking and drove on up, trying not to think of sad songs. As directed, I approached the triage nurse with the emergency letter I'd been given after Hannah was discharged last August and explained what MCADD was and said we should be seen immediately. They got that part right and had us in a triage room quickly, where Hannah flirted wanly with everyone, especially those who called her pale. A quick blood sugar check gave us an 84 which they said was great and they had us go back to the waiting room to wait to an exam room. Now, we didn't wait a long time because frankly it was not as busy as they often are but we got taken back to a room after 15 minutes or so.

A nurse said they would be calling the metabolic doc on call but first we could try Pedialyte and see if Hannah could keep it down. I said gosh, she hated it the one time I gave it to her, so if you want to do a trial of keeping food down let's use her actual food, breast milk, which I have lovingly pumped out of my body for the express purpose of nourishing her(!!!) rather than crappy tasting Gatorade lite. The nurse said well milk can be hard to digest but she understood why babies might not want Pedialyte and theirs wasn't even flavored. Now, was she dumb as a post or did she relay this info through four other people who garbled it, I don't know, but someone tells the doc (but not me) I have refused to let them give Hannah a glucose IV (which is in fact the reason I am there, since my understanding is that if she needs one nothing else will do) so after the baby takes an ounce and a half of milk, keeps it down, sleeps until a new glucose check requires a new blood draw by an inept tech who fails to draw enough to test, then she takes two more ounces of milk, two exams by the pediatric fellow, then the actual doc comes in and says "Well since you refused the IV we will need to get the labs before we call metabolics (!!!)" at which time my head exploded and was scraped off the ceiling tiles by an underpaid troll blah blah blah at which time I said, no, I refused PEDIALYTE and if the metabolic doc says an IV is needed then GIVE IT TO HER NOW, THREE HOURS AFTER WE CAME IN and if they tested her sugar and it was fine what was the deal? She said metabolics preferred her up at 120 not down at 84 which of course I would never know the expected numbers because they don't want me testing her because the sugars might give me false security when her metabolic cycle is really whacked out and she needs medical evaluation and labs done. Despite having been told 84 was good, now 84 was not good enough, but they thought she'd be better now she was keeping tiny bits of milk down. So, I say, does my baby need IV glucose or not??? Well if she is keeping food down now, probably not but let's run the metabolic labs and get back to you.

The first nurse we saw was apparently leaving early and didn't want to get stuck with the paperwork for an infant IV blood draw because she told the tech that Shawna (the replacement) could do it after she glanced at her watch and tapped her motherfucking foot. So we waited for the new nurse to come on shift, get up to speed on Hannah, then call the IV team who were on another floor, but who, bless them, were better at sticking a baby but they get a fail on taping the baby arm to the immobilizing board as she now has a big red tape burn. They left the IV cath in her hand in case after the "special" labs were run they still wanted to do a glucose IV (remember, the IV is what I thought I came in for, four hours previously). They told me the labs could take a while then they'd talk to genetics on call and get back to me and it might be two hours, so I pumped and comforted Hannah and got her to sleep and passed out in a chair at an inappropriate angle for all of fifteen minutes until the results came back about 75 minutes after the test, and we were discharged as all her labs were normal.

So, what did I learn from all this? 1- I need to give more directions to the hospital staff, and just take charge. Even with all this education when it comes to my baby I believe I should be putting my trust in the folk who are in the know, but they blew it on three different points in how Hannah got care, even as described by the metabolics doc who also works there. 2- My instincts are not wrong. So, my instinct that she should go in was right, as at the time she was puking she made ketones but then, as soon as she could eat and hold down breast milk she really stabilized in every way. When I talked to the on call doc on Sunday afternoon he said if I had only called in he would have sent me in to the ER just based on her age and the vomiting, he would have preferred they had followed the emergency letter and done the glucose test, labs with an IV, and called him instead of dicking around for four hours, but the ketones tell him she was not great however she righted herself. 3- I love Hannah beyond words, dammit. 4- I look forward to not pumping anymore but if you try to tell me breast milk is indigestible I might gouge out your eye with my very flexible pump tubing and it won't be fast. Do not come between my baby and my fucking pumped milk. I am much, much meaner than I look when I am wailing in your exam room at two in the morning. 5- You remember a time when you cried until you sobbed and the sobbing wouldn't stop right away and every time you took a deep breath and it would catch in your chest from the spasms in your ribcage like a half sob? It is heartbreaking for a mom to see her baby do that. 6- I am only taking back some of the nice things I have said about nurses. 7- Sale on corn.

Haiku Friday - where to kiss the baby

The soft rounded calf
Her wee Volkswagen Bug feet
The tips of her toes

Her forehead is smooth
no need to kiss worry lines
when we say goodbye

The base of her head
meets the top of the neck with
a sculpted hollow

Her downy soft hair
Tickles my nose when she sleeps
Tucked under my chin

Kiss her open mouth
and she laughs herself silly
then smooch on her neck

The best placed kiss
lands anywhere when she strokes
my face with her hand



See A Mommy Story to link to more haiku. Enjoy your weekend. I recommend cheese toast.

Grace in small babies

How big is the baby?



Is she "SO BIG?"
"SO BIG?"


Hannah is so big!

Where does the night live?

I always forget that the big life changes don't really just happen suddenly, they actually sneak up on you gradually and it just takes some time to see the change for what it is. Claire has been asking Why and What questions for some time now. It was clear a year ago that she was processing multiple layers of information simultaneously. When she visited me in the hospital when Hannah was born, after a few days of visiting and never seeing me out of bed she said to me "I need to see your legs." Her questions have become more existential and harder to avoid answering, and her own explanations ever more endearing. When she told me why her friend Logan didn't go on field trips from the day care she explained that he had to go home to his mommy to get some energy. Driving home yesterday in the car at sunset, she remarked that the sun was gone, then wondered where it had gone, and after some reflection asked "where does the night live?" Now, we all know, all mothers believe their children to be the brightest and best but I was tickled that when our brief explanation of daytime and sunshine failed to mention night, she filled in her own blanks and surmised that night was involved in the absence of the sun, but if she could say that she lived "in Salt Lake City in Utah!" then where did the night hail from? When this came up again over dinner Lord Honey decided we should get more scientific and decided to explain starting with the shadow cast by his hand and then using his other hand to suggest an imaginary object that could have been a sun or a planet and by the time he got to revolving I was hiding behind Hannah and laughing until he asked her if she got it and her reply was "I want a special treat." I think even for deep thinking three year olds, abstract concepts might take a while longer.

Hannah the happy baby

Friday haiku - week in review

My stepson's dear friend
came to our house on Sunday,
sleepovers are fun.

I planned better food
to make the young guest happy
he has nice manners.

And he loves to read!
for boys, good influences
are so hard to find.

The told me they were
headed off to the close park
and I said OK.

A minute later
My stepson comes in screaming
"He fell! Broke his arm!"

I ran out. He had.
They both jumped off the garage.
The friend could not fly.

I called 9-1-1.
His arm bent in the middle
in ways it should not.

His mom forgave us
after he had surgery
to place a few pins.

She said he always
wants to be a daredevil,
she is used to it.


I have girls! We have tea parties! We play Mommy and Daddy! God help me I hope they never feel the need to jump off buildings, or date the boys who do. But maybe that part is easier than all the drama? I guess that remains to be seen.

Join us with your haiku on your blog and link back to A Mommy Story for the linky love.

The great train adventure

Take a nice summer day, a train, and a red headed girl out with her day care summer camp class including one of her favorite friends,
add her most favorite cousin,

and have a great day.