Y’all, I signed up to be a BeautiControl consultant. Say what???

Was I suffering from a bout of insanity? Probably. It was kind of an investment. I didn’t do it as a moneymaking opportunity (as someone who works in the corporate office of a network marketing company, I get enough of that on a daily basis). I don’t want to be that friend/relative.

I signed up just so I could get the discount. And since I’m not planning to make money with it, I don’t have a problem passing my discount on to anyone around me so my friends and family are actually excited that I’ve signed up. It probably helps that they don’t have to be afraid that I’m going to ask them to host parties every week.

***

I had an appointment this morning for a slimming body wrap. I’ve always wanted one of those and have never been able to afford one - but a gift certificate to a local spa actually made the body wrap an option.

So I showed up this morning for my appointment and was told the body wrap lady wasn’t in today and since my appointment was at the same time they opened for the day, they weren’t able to call me beforehand to let me know.

I don’t know why, but that really irritated me. I don’t have any idea what thought they should have done about it. It was just frustrating to show up and then have to turn around and go back home.

***

After the cops left last night (/early this morning) INWOCA finally managed to control his malfunctioning alarm. We were all too pleased to witness this final golden silence, but after listening to repetitions of 6 different alarm tones approximately 40 times over almost an hour, we were pretty much awake.

Fortunately, I was able to go back to sleep relatively soon, only to be awoken again by a screaming LB at 3am at which point I made my recent habit of migrating into her room for the remainder of the night. I noticed at that point that J had still not returned to bed after being wakened by Idiot Neighbor. An improvement, really, since until last night she had been waking up at 2am. But still.

I don’t handle sleep deprivation too well. One thing J has learned about me over the last 5+ years is UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS IT APPROPRIATE TO DISTURB MY SLEEP. A sleepless night leaves me grumpy, angry, depressed, grumpy, mean and grumpy for the entire next day. Fortunately for everyone around me, LB decided to lounge in bed with me from 7-9am this morning and we were both able to get some sleep. By “both” I mean me and LB - J was never able to catch up on his sleep due to an extremely busy workload today. I don’t know how he does that.

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LB’s vocabulary is increasing every day. I asked her to say Grandmommy the other day and she said it. Once. Then it became “Gummy.” And then it became “Dummy.” We stopped there.

Current words now include (variations of) Mama, Daddo (her word for J), Jon, Iris, Papa, Grandpa, cheetah, puppy, kitty, diaper, butt, bee-bo (belly button), all done, baby, ball, bee, bupp (passifier - don’t ask), butterfly (sort of), hot, moo, duck, up, hi, bye-bye, please, eye, kiss, touch, button, banana, brush, blue, two and uh-oh.

There are probably more, but they’re not coming to mind right now. It’s harder than it looks to actually sit down and list out all the words your child says on a daily basis.

And then think better of it and opt for calling the police.

Remember the idiot whose car horn goes off every morning?  He’s got a New! Alarm! now - one of those fancy zango ones that does 6 different screams and chirping patterns in repetition.

And it’s malfunctioning.

It’s gone off 34 35 36 times in the last half hour.  It’s hard enough to get Button to sleep these days and it’s a complete miracle she hasn’t woken up yet but if she does I swear I’m going over there with a sledge hammer.

And the fool has either left his car in the street while he’s not home or he’s too much of an ass to do anything about it.

The cops are here now and I’d better see that sucker towed away.

Nope.  The car owner is outside now.  After half an hour of listening to his car scream, it takes the cops showing up to get him to do anything about it???

And now the cops are gone and the alarm is still malfunctioning.

Bastards.

I’ve read about it happening to other families. I’ve heard the horror stories, the agony.

My heart went out to those who suffered and yet… there was always that part of me that thought it would never happen to me. Not to my family. This kind of tragedy was just too removed to ever affect me personally. I suppose that feeling of invincibility is natural.

It comes on suddenly and without warning, tearing into the unity and routine of peaceful family life. In an instant, the relationship within the core family unit is disrupted as the one you care so much about transforms into someone you hardly know. Weeks, months go by without relief, without respite.

The constant pain to your loved one is torturous to you both and seems especially to rear its ugly head at night. In the most heart wrenching of ironies, your loved one stubbornly refuses the very medicinal treatments that could alleviate the pain (even if only for a short time) as though you were trying to offer pure arsenic. As sleep evades you night after night, the frustration rips at the very fibers of your being and you find yourself mourning for the way things were.

The life you previously knew and had under control has been ripped from beneath your feet like a slippery rug. What once was is no more and you are now sprawled on the floor, desperately trying to grasp to any small fibers that may remain of the life you once took for granted. But it is no use. What is done is done and there is no hope but to wait out the storm that seems to ravage your dwelling for eternity.

The monster has a name, which will evermore send shivers down my spine: Molars.

LB has two that have broken through, and several more on the way. My predictable, cooperative child has completely forsaken her amiability when it comes to sleeping. She is unable to sleep unless I am in the room. And I don’t mean go to sleep (though that is the case as well). She is unable to stay asleep. Even if she’s snoring, she wakes up the second my presence is no longer in the room, and starts screaming hysterically. This vicious cycle starts at about 11:30pm and continues until morning.

As you can imagine, our household hasn’t exactly been overdosed with sleep as of late so, um, I make no guarantees about the coherence of this and/or future posts.

Just sayin’.

I fixed the feed links in my sidebar.  Apparently the WordPress php I was using wasn’t actually working.  So they should be active now.  I have yet to figure out how to successfully get a feed for the Private/Protected posts, since they don’t appear to be showing up at all in my feed reader.  Are any of you guys getting any kind of indication when a protected post has been published?

I use AN Hosting and my server goes down EVERY. DAY.  It’s only for a few minutes at a time, but it’s still really frustrating, especially when I’ve just written a post or an email and click “Submit” or “Send” and get an error message.

So I’m thinking of switching hosts - any recommendations?

Also, today is my dad’s birthday and I have NO. IDEA. what to get him.  I haven’t been procrastinating - I just can’t think of anything.  He is so hard to buy for.  He’d be appreciative and gracious even if I gave him a cardboard box full of lint because that’s how he is, but I want to give him something thoughtful that shows I specifically picked it out for him.

He has money, so he can buy himself whatever he wants, and usually does.  Which means gift certificates are pretty meaningless.  I can’t get him something useful because he can afford to buy himself the bigger better model that he would like more anyway.

He likes to read and watch movies, but we stocked him up on books and DVDs for Christmas.

He doesn’t really have any hobbies other than work…and the Dallas Cowboys I suppose.  But he’s got all the desk accessories he could ever need, and I can’t get him a T-shirt or a jersey or anything because he’s not casual enough to wear that kind of thing.

So when it comes down to it, we’re usually left with trying to come up with the perfect creative “you would never think of this” random gift - like one year we got him a set of pool balls that were painted in the colors/logos of his 2 favorite baseball teams.

But there’s only so many of those kind of gifts.  This year…I’ve got nuthin.

And I’ve got approximately 5 hours to turn “nuthin” into “sumthin.”  Yikes…