As Tears Go By

Oh, I have so much to update you all on. Every day this week, I've had a post in my head, but haven't had time to write it up. First and foremost, thank you all for the birthday wishes! You're all so sweet and lovely. And presents! There were book presents (lots)(I'll post a picture soon!), and Internet presents! Hotfessional gave me the One Sweet Blog Award, which was awesome of her. I will pass that one along to Shelly Overlook and Jess Loolu, because not only are their blogs fantastic, but their comments on other people's blogs are always thoughtful, insightful, and caring. And I won a book contest at Jess Riley's blog! Yay! Another book to look forward to!

Birthday weekend recap: I had Friday off work, so we rented movies, played with the kids, and bummed around the house in our pajamas all day. A great relaxing, no-stress day. We also planned a little cookout for ourselves, Rock's mom and stepdad and my dad and stepmom. I wanted to have the cookout on Sunday, so that Saturday could be low-stress, too, but my dad and stepmom had a scheduling conflict with Sunday, so the cookout had to be on Saturday. Which meant that Rock's mother would be at work until time for it to start, so I would have to make the side dishes and get everything ready. No big deal, right? Well, that's what I thought, until Saturday turned out to be one of those "AntiMidas" days. Y'know, when you have the opposite of the Midas touch? Instead of gold, everything I touched turned to shit. The second I stepped into the shower, my dad called. Someone knocked on our door when we were all fresh from showers and baths and not dressed. (It turned out to be the mailperson.) Then we started cooking. We had only two things to make, baked beans and a taco dip with refried beans, sour cream and cheese. Simplicity, right? Well, I hadn't bought refried beans while we were at the grocery store because I was sure that we had some at home. WRONG! No refried beans. We decided to make the dip anyway, replacing the beans with ground beef, and pressed on. Rock browned some ground beef to use in both the dip and the baked beans, and I mixed up the other dip ingredients and tried to open the can of beans to pour them in the baking dish. Except our damn can opener hates me, so it just wouldn't work. I punched about five holes in the top of the can before I gave up and asked Rock to do it. (He griped about what a mess I had made of the can top before I gave up. Guess who's buying a new can opener this weekend?) We got the baked beans ready and into the oven, the beef was ready to spread in the pan as the bottom layer of the dip, and then! Rock discovered that I had forgotten to wash out ANY of the bowls or baking dishes we were using (baked beans in one, beef dumped in one to spread, mixing bowl with sour cream in it to mix for dip). Which would ordinarily be a small problem - our cabinets are clean, right? Except that not too long ago, our Fire King mixing bowl had broken IN THE CABINET! (Remember that post? The bowl randomly broke one Sunday morning?) Yeah, so there were pieces of glass in the baking dish. Rock completely freaked. I started crying. Finally, we pulled it together and scraped the beef out of the baking dish, leaving a small layer, which we discarded, and then washed it thoroughly. We did the same with the mixing bowl, and looked through the bottom of the baking dish the beans were in and didn't see any glass (and said a small prayer). (You totally want to come to my house for dinner, don't you? Come on in, we're having beans and glass! It's a delicacy.) Fortunately, the rest of the cooking passed without incident. (Really, what else was there to go wrong at that point? I would have had to cut off my hand with the electric mixer for things to get worse.) We got the food organized, the kids ready, and loaded up our Ford Excursion to go down to the in-laws house, which is literally one minute down our driveway. So I didn't put Wildman in his carseat. I just set him on the back seat. (Now I'm not sure what I was thinking, because this is the child who opened the car door and almost fell out when I was driving him from the middle of our driveway up to our parking area-about 200 feet or so. I had to lock the doors to keep him in my little Civic!) Then, once we got to the in-laws', I opened the back door without looking in the window to see where he was. He was leaning against the door, of course, and so he slid out and slid down the side of the SUV and onto the ground before I could catch him. Talk about wanting to die! Is there any feeling worse than accidentally allowing your child to get hurt? Didn't think so. I can still see him sliding down the side of that car if I close my eyes. (Why yes, I will accept the Worst Mother of the Year award now, thank you.) Thank God, he was completely fine, and the rest of Saturday passed without incident. (Again, there wasn't much more that COULD go wrong.) I have never been so glad to see my birthday end as I was this year. Sunday was complete bliss though. We slept late, made omelets for breakfast, and then headed to the other grandparents' house to drop off the kids. Then, we went to Barnes and Noble, had coffee and book shopped for a couple hours. It was fabulous. I got some great books that I am really looking forward to reading - "Hardly Knew Her" by Laura Lippman, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Steig Larson, "Mr. White's Confession" by Robert Clark, "The Broken Shore" by Peter Temple, "Slam" by Nick Hornby, "Shopgirl" by Steve Martin, "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, and "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz. Then, we picked up the kids and went out to dinner at our favorite local Mexican restaurant. So the weekend ended well.

Yesterday, though, one of my closest friends called me. She's 17 weeks pregnant with her second child, a much longed for and awaited event. They tried for close to a year before she got pregnant. Yesterday, she started leaking amniotic fluid. It's way too early for that. If it doesn't stop (and soon!), she will either go into labor, or have to terminate the pregnancy. The baby will not be viable at this point. I cried with her on the phone last night. Then I called my dad and asked him and his four churches (he's a minister) to pray for her. So please, keep my friend Danielle in your thoughts.