Threat of Bodily Harm

Here's a heartwarming story, just in time for mother's day.

Last night Belly was over tired and very sensitive. Kind of like me lately! Anyway, he kept crying over every little thing. Told him to finish his dinner, he cried. Told him to go brush his teeth, he cried. I went upstairs to check on his progress, he was standing in front of the toilet, pants around his ankles, crying. He'd started crying when he was preparing to pee, and GB started laughing, which only made him cry harder. Then he went to jump on my bed, started crying and said he only likes to do that when he's happy, but not when he's sad.

Eventually I ended up holding him like a baby, in the middle of my bed, rocking him and telling him how much I love him. Nice, warm moment, no? My mother had been using our computer, so she comes in to ask a question. She tried to distract Belly, and challenged him to a race back to the living room. Belly doesn't turn down a challenge. So off he ran. She said, "Come on, we'll beat your Momma!" and do you know what he replied?!

"Okay! Beat her with what?"

The little guy went from being comforted in my lap to threatening to beat the hell outta me. WTF? Where did such violent tendencies come from?!

Just so you know, when he realized what Grandma meant, he came back to me crying that he was sorry. Poor little guy had a rough day. I forgave him. But I'm watching my back now.

Rats AKA Soft as Mashed Bananas

Oooohkay, I'm here to tell you guys just how idiotic I really am. Our neighborhood is battling a rat problem. The city has put out poison, which leads to dead rats all over the place. Seems our best defense is to keep all openings around our garage blocked off. See, they tend to stay in the alley, not in the streets, back yards, or houses. Thank god, could you see me running around after rats all day? So, they burrow and gnaw their way into the garages on our block, I guess looking for food or someplace warm and dry. Who knows how rats think??
Since this is NOT healthy for any humans, we have been looking into ways to stem the rat tide. We put out glue traps, figuring it wasn't poisonous (don't want our domestic pets getting sick) or messy. I fully expected to come out one morning and find a dead rat on a glue trap. THAT, I can handle all by my lil old self. Use the shovel and dispose of it's dirty little corpse.
What I did NOT expect is what I saw when I got home with Belly today. A tiny little rat, stuck on the glue pad, facing a corner, sitting very still because it's terrified. Belly noticed it, too. It only took me about five seconds to decide there was no way I was throwing the trap with the rat into the trash. So what did I do? Go ahead and laugh now - I used the shovel to help the little thing get out of the trap. As soon as I started trying to free one of it's feet, it started squeaking. It didn't turn and attempt to bite the shovel (which I expected) but instead it just fought harder to try to get out. As I got one little rat foot at a time out of the trap, it stopped fighting so hard, stopped squeaking, and kind of just waited. When the final foot came loose, it shot away through a small hole in the corner.
I threw the trap away. Then Belly asked me if the "mouse" was okay, if it got to go home to it's mom and dad. I said yes.

What kind of lunatic sets rats free? This one, apparently. That thing is damn lucky that I'm running on hormones this week.

Pulp Fiction Explains Friendship

Received phone calls this morning from two old friends. Both were part of the very small group of 3 that were with us when we got married, all those years ago. One kind of drifted away, and we stopped talking. We’d been extremely close for a period of time, and I suppose it just fizzled out. She’d show up every now and then, then she’d be MIA for months. Eventually she became MIA permanently. Yes, I know the phone works both ways and I could have called her. But I didn’t. Anyway, she called to invite me out for her birthday this weekend. I said I’ve already got plans.

The other is a childhood friend. We’ve been through a ton of shit together. We’ve annulled our friendship many times over the years. I’ve heard you don’t really know your friends until you get into a fight with one. By that measure, we must be great friends. He’s one of the few people I’ve stopped talking to and actually started again. But we were always able to pick up where we left off. Lots of friendships can’t survive that kind of thing. And the other thing that's exceptional about our friendship: we can just sit and be. You know that scene in Pulp Fiction, when Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace are at dinner right after they meet?

Mia: Don't you hate that?
Vincent: What?
Mia: Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?
Vincent: I don't know. That's a good question.
Mia: That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.

(Long before we got married, my husband and I spent many hours just sitting together, doing nothing, talking about nothing, just enjoying being in the same space. It's one reason I know I married the right person.)

So, this morning I heard from two old friends, both unexpected calls. The major difference was in my reaction to the phone calls. In the first, I was pretty quiet, made polite inquiries as to the health of her family. In the second, instead of being guarded and wondering how long it had been since I’d talked to this person and why they were calling now, I said, “Hey, I’ve missed you! Whatcha doin?”

The fragility of friendship has always interested me. You don’t always need a big reason to stop being friends with someone. Sometimes, you need a big reason to remain friends. And when it comes down to that, I’d say your friendship has just expired.

My Bedroom

Both of these pics were taken from my bedroom yesterday. The tree in front of our house is in full bloom, and it's LITERALLY right in front of the window now. Yeah, I could have it trimmed, but I enjoy it too much :) The other is my demented and defective cat, Clementine, being annoyed by my picture taking interrupting her nap.
Gave Eva dog a bath yesterday. Poor thing looked at me as if to ask, "What did I ever do to you to deserve such treatment?!" She looks (and smells!) much better now.

This morning Belly came into the kitchen furiously rubbing one eye and crying that it hurt. I stood him on a chair to better appraise the situation, but he kept rubbing -mashing, more like- that eye with his tiny fist. Tried flushing it with water, couldn't even get him to open it, he said it was burning. Finally his eye opens and it's NOT FACING THE SAME WAY AS THE OTHER ONE! I got nervous because I was sure he'd severed some optical nerve, but it turned out it was because he was trying so hard to close his eye again, not because it was preparing to drop out of his skull. Spent twenty minutes flushing his little eye with cool water, extracting eyelashes from said eye, that had obviously been rammed in there by his fervent eye rubbing. Checked his vision, proclaimed him a-ok. Lemmetellya, no one is more vigilant about eye health than yours truly, after almost going blind from some rare and hard to pronounce disease. Kids were quite late for school after that. Ah, must be a Monday.