At Least She's Thrifty...

I've already posted about the weird toy habits of my Dachshund.... her driving need to disembowel any toy she is given, her insane obsession with fetch... just to demonstrate, below is a picture of what she brought me the other day...

It is a fleece toy scrap about 2 inches long...it used to be a plush dog... and as you can see in the background, she fully expects me to throw it for her to fetch... do you have any idea how hard it is to throw a piece of fleece that small any considerable distance? It's not easy, my friends. She eventually tore it into pieces too tiny for her to even carry around... so I finally got to dispose of the poor little thing. She has been known to bring me pieces of fluff from the inside of toys to play fetch... she may need therapeutic intervention.

But on the plus side, we don't have to buy toys very often.

Jam

This is jam. Strawberry Jam. This is strawberry jam that I made with my own two hands in my own kitchen which I then canned... and I only burned myself twice.

I am very proud of myself. And it is delicious.

There is a good chance that everyone will be getting jam for Christmas this year...

But What If I Need Butter?

The past couple of weeks have been a little hard on the emotional side of things... which, if you know me well, is not something I ever readily admit to. I blame it on the upcoming holidays. A lot of people have difficulty this time of year... those who have lost loved ones, those who don't have close loved ones, those who are ill... i could go on and on. Infertility fits squarely in that catgory of people. The holidays are largely centered around children... from the songs on the radio down to the cutesy Rudolph onesie in Target... for instance, on a normal summer day, walking by the 'baby' section of Wal-Mart makes me hold my breath and walk a little faster. During the holidays, I might as well avoid that area of the store all together... which is unfortunate because it is next to the dairy section where they keep wonderful things like butter and milk. Heck, Christmas is a holiday firmly centered around THE baby, for crying out loud... Nativity scenes once made me feel very peaceful and calm... now they just turn me into a blubbering mess.

So, all that to say, I've been a little touchy. Which is directly related to how I ended up crying in the bathroom at a church during a ladies' evening while everyone else enjoyed their cheesecake and coffee and listened intently to a speaker telling us how to "Bring Home the Wonder of Christmas"... the last straw on the proverbial camel's back was this cheesy song about Mary and how she felt about Jesus... so I did what any touchy barren woman would do... I faked a choking cough to explain my watery eyes and high-tailed it to the loo where I could regain my composure in private. I am not ashamed people:-) But, that is not where my emotional mini-breakdown started...

It all started ealier in the evening listening to other women complain about their children... A little disclaimer- I know being a parent is the most difficult job on the planet... I know that sleepless nights make you crazy, and tantruming children make you want to sell them on the black market, and teenagers have their own universe of problems. I know that mothers need to feel comfortable expressing their frustration with mothering sometimes, and that there is a lot of pressure to be supermom... I know.

But, the fact still remains that I would give absolutely anything in the entire world to have the opportunity to complain about having to get up every night for a year to nurse my child.

This song has been in my head a lot lately... most of you have probably seen or heard it. If so, go about your business. If not, I encourage you to listen and watch. Just ignore the theatrical hand motions... they annoy me...

Not 30

I am not thirty. Not yet anyway. My 29th birthday was last week, and Sugarbear went around telling everyone that I was not thirty. Sure, people have teased me, last year in my twenties, etc. It's all in good fun, and getting older never seemed all that worrisome to me. Who knows, maybe one of these days I'll actually start to feel like a grown-up versus some tongue-tied, half-scared kid. So, turning 30 next year doesn't bother me in and of itself. Turning 30 and still being a family of 2 bothers me beyond description. But, that's not my point.

My point is that even though there are things that I hope change before I turn 30, I still love birthdays. Why? Not because of the gifts or the cake, or the happy birthday wishes. My favorite thing about my birthday is a phone call. I have a large immediate family, and we are a fair distance away from each other. So, birthday phone calls are required in my family. Sometimes my twin brother and I race to see who can call each other the earliest. I love all the birthday phone calls, but one in particular is especially meaningful.

For as long as I’ve been old enough and far enough away to get birthday phone calls, my birthday has always started with a short but sweet phone call from my grandmother. Every year on the night before my birthday, I make sure I put my phone by my bed, because I know that before I get out of bed, my grandmother will call. She always calls first. She doesn’t say hello, she doesn’t say good morning. She sings me happy birthday. Bless her heart, singing has never been her thing. (which she readily has admitted to for as long as I remember). But, she sings me happy birthday. And it is the highlight of my day.

The older I get, the more and more that one warbly happy birthday phone call means to me. I cherish it because there will be a birthday, when I’m very old, where I won’t get woken up by that early morning birthday serenade from my grandmother. The sweetest traditions don’t always come in big, grandiose gestures. Sometimes they come in a simple, sweet phone call from a slightly tone deaf little not-too-old lady…