The Niece, The Myth, The Legend

My niece is many things.

She is five. She is OBSESSED with horses (seriously, yesterday she wore her riding helmet all day and "rode" her plastic horses around). She is both incredibly excited and incredibly nervous about starting Kindergarten next week. She is freakishly tall for her age. 

But above all those things she is...

Naturally Skinny

This is a condition that I had previously believed only existed in Mary Higgins Clark novels (naturally skinny heroines always wear trousers and do their hair in chignons).  It is not a condition I am personally familiar with.  In fact, until she came into our lives as a very bald, very serious, and very tall 10 months old I didn't believe that naturally skinny people actually existed.

It seemed a myth. Like Bigfoot, or Yeti, or people who found Michal Bolton attractive.

Imagine my surprise when I first encountered her saying "I'm full" half-way though an ice cream cone.  Seriously?  Who stops eating an ice cream cone? 

Naturally Skinny People...that's who.

Today my sister and I had to go to Target to exchange a skirt for her because the size Small that my mom bought her was too big.  And not a little too big, it was HUGE on her.

So we had to get an Extra Small.

The last Extra Small item I bought was the mini blizzard at Dairy Queen....

don't judge me

A Tale of Two Opossums

Here we are on Wednesday night and I was just thinking how awesome it is that I haven't seen Mad-Eye Moody since his second appearance on Friday, when I wander over to let the dog out and

OHMYGODTHEREISADIFFERENTOPOSSUMONTHEPORCHAREYOUFREAKINGKIDDINGME

That's me, screaming to myself, because I'm home alone being besieged by opossums.

Translated this means: "Well oh my, it appears that there a opossum on the porch and dear me it is definitely NOT my nemesis Mad-Eye Moody"

Are you impressed that I can tell opossums apart?

Well I can and here is my slightly grainy iPhone camera proof!  You'll have to pardon the shakiness of the the photos but the rush of adrenaline at the site of a opossum leaves me unable to hold my phone steady (and probably with the strength to lift a car above my head but since the cars were outside I clearly couldn't test this theory out)

First up Mad-Eye Moody. (notice how extra huge and creepy he is) 

Enter the new opossum (I'm gonna have to assume that she is his Lady Love)

 

She is way smaller, and has two working eyes. If my sister were home she would come up with a clever name for her. I don't have time for that because I have to go teach the dog to pee in the toilet since there is a ZERO percent chance that I'm opening the door to let him out! Then I have to go hide.

Did I mention that I'm home alone?

Also I'm afraid my now public disregard for nature is really going have a negative impact on the chances of me marrying Cowboy Josh....bummer

And since moving doesn't seem like a valid option I have decided I need to go to bed earlier thus limiting my chance of seeing a romantic tryst between Mad-Eye and his Lady Love. 

Ignorance is bliss people

(but if any sweet opossum lovin' starts happening I am so out of here)

Mad-Eye Moody

 Picture the scene:  It’s Thursday night in mid-summer.  The heat has been incredible all day and by midnight my sister and I are being our usual awesome selves.  You know, sitting on our asses watching Downton Abbey and imagining ourselves on the show (side note why do I always picture myself as an Anna rather than Lady Mary?)  Anyway the dog had been whining at the door since the last time Lady Mary and Matthew gazed at each other longingly across a room so I hauled myself off the couch to let him out.  I snapped on the light and was just about to open the door when a shriek emitted from my sisters mouth, the likes of which I hadn’t heard before.  It sounded something like this

“OHMYGODDON’TLETHIMOUTTHEREISANOPOSSUMOUTTHERE”

Translated this means: Hey Jesse, don’t be alarmed but there is an opossum outside so don’t let the dog out unless you want him to be attacked.

Yep, GIANT opossum sitting on the table outside the window chowing down on the cat food we keep out there.

But this wasn’t just any opossum, this was a HUGE, ugly, freakish opossum with one little beady black eye and one dead eye. 

Noelle promptly named him Mad-Eye  Moody (which I initially refused to call him but have since come to accept)

In our sisterly relationship Noelle is in charge of all things related to nature (bugs, spiders, reptiles, rodents, pigs, etc) so she was in charge of scaring the thing away since clearly I wasn’t going to step foot on the porch.   But as she walked over to the door she suddenly recalled a news story she had read earlier that day about 2 girls in Tennessee (or Kentucky, or West Virginia…it was definitely in one of the states) who were attacked by a rabid beaver earlier in the week (seriously Google it, it happened).  Anyway as she recalls this story she turns to me and says “what if it has rabies and runs inside when I open the door?”

Such a helpful statement don’t you think?

After some quiet shrieking on my part (it would do no good to wake my niece) I cowered behind the couch as she opened the door (an inch) and slammed it shut repeatedly to drive Mad-Eye away.

After a much needed Facebook status update I went to bed.

The next night…he was back.

Stupid opossum. 

Stupid MALE opossum.

With big hairy opossum balls that have touched my table, and chair, and deck.

We need to move

ASAP

Screw you 2011 I want my flying car!

Looking back on all these retrospectives of 2011 I can't help but gag a little whenever I see some glowing post about how fantastically awesome 2011 has been.

"OMG it's the best year ever"

"2011 has been a year of amazements"

"this has been the best year of my life"

Really? Because I have to say that 2011 has been a year of disappointments. Do you what I drive? A Toyota. It's a regular car that drives on a regular road. Seriously, how boring is that? It doesn't fly, or transform, or talk to me. It just sucks gas and drives.

And do you know how I get from pace to place (when I'm not driving my boring car) I walk. No jet pack, not even a hover board. Seriously, I'm willing to start wearing high tops if it means I get a hover board.

So I ask you 2011, where is my personal robot like Rosie from the Jetsons? Shouldn't she be waking me up in the morning with coffee and breakfast? Shouldn't she be making my bed and brushing my teeth and basically turning me into the laziest person EVER (side bar: why weren't the Jetsons fatter). Where is my spaceship? Where is my machine that magically cooks anything I want with the touch of a button in under 60 seconds? And for the love of Pete where is my flying car?

I mean sure, I'm typing this on my iPad while listening to my iPod and answering email on my phone...but really 2011 I expected more from you.

The Rejection Game

Do you remember middle school gym class and how horrifying it was when two of the super athletic cool kids were chosen as team captains and the rest of the class lined up waiting to be picked?

This, as you can well imagine, never ended well for me.  I was neither popular, or athletic.  What I was, was short...very short.  I was once compared to a wind-up toy.

For this reason I never much cared for gym, and never took it past those dreaded middle school years (in my high school the marching band counted as PE credit...told you I wasn't popular).

I like to think that those middle school gym classes were the beginning of my fear of rejection.  And lets face it, no one really likes being rejected.  We strive to fit it, to be part of a crowd, to be accepted by those around us.  It's the reason why people dress, and act, and talk, the way they do.  And lets not pretend like you don't do it too.  Everyone wants acceptance.

I'm not saying its a bad thing to want to be accepted.  I'm saying that it sucks to be rejected.

The adoption process, at least in my personal experience, is a study in rejection.  You spend months getting paperwork together; with background checks, and fingerprints (multiple times which, come on, is stupid), and social work visits, and interviews.  Your friends and family write letters of recommendation.  You create a self-absorbed (on purpose) scrapbook all about how fantastically awesome you are.  And FINALLY you submit everything to the agency and you wait...

and wait...

and wait...

And while each adoption journey, domestic or international, has it's own particular struggles, the wait is universal. And it doesn't matter if you wait 4 months for a birth mother to choose you in a domestic situation, or 36 months to get your match from China, the waiting (while it lasts), seems endless.

In my particular case the wait (9 months and counting) is interrupted with these intense moments of hope.  When I match the criteria a birth mother is looking for, and my profile is shown.  Let me assure you that the wait, during those moments, is worse then endless.  And when the hope dies, I'm still waiting, the short, unpopular kid in gym class, standing on the sidelines while everyone else plays.

It sucks...a lot.

And it's happened five times. 

And I really don't want it to happen a 6th.

A girl can only be rejected so many times before she starts to think...maybe it's her.

(also, gym teachers, I really hope you don't let the cool kids pick teams anymore...just sayin)

Envy

I often find my self suffering from blog envy or, more specifically, envy of the crafty-antiquey-bakey-homemadey stuff I see in blogs.

You see in my mind I am that girl, the one who crafts, and writes, and reads, and L.I.V.E.S. everyday like life is some sort of carnival and I'm queen of the parade.

And I like to craft, and antique, and bake (ok that's a lie, unless you count the cookies that you just break apart and set on the cookie sheet because I can bake the shit out of those), and do homemade things.

But.....

I'm inherently lazy.  I mean there are lots of things I like to do (in theory).  Things like knit, and open an etsy shop, and find a job I can do from home AND make enough money to pay the bills, and run.

But...my hands hurt when I try to knit.

Etsy already has ten thousand of any idea I've ever had (and they are all way cuter than anything I could make).

I was an English Major, which means that my second degree gave me the skills I needed to get a job, but somehow teaching from my living room isn't shaping up to be that million dollar work-from-home idea.

The idea of shopping for a sports bra hardy enough to reign in the girls is too overwhelming for words.

So until then I'll continue to read blogs and drool over the craft rooms, and gorgeously wrapped presents, and lovely re-purposed furniture that someone just happened to find in an old barn.  And I'll work on small projects and dream of the day when my niece won't need a play room and I can turn  it into a crafting mecca....

Classy is my middle name

There is, in my town, a gated community.  A very nice gated community. With guards, and "estates."  It holds the type of houses where I imagine that people dress for dinner.  The kind of places where the pool house out back is bigger than my first apartment.  The kind of neighborhood where the Gilmore's would live (Richard and Emily obviously...Lorelai wouldn't be caught dead there) It's one of those neighborhoods that get made fun of for being snotty and stuck up (and let's be honest....parts of it probably are).

But I have friends that live in the (still very nice) but un-snotty part of the neighborhood.  And when I visit them, as I often do, I am usually conscious of the bevy of (very nice) cars going by me in the residents lane while I idle in the visitors lane waiting for another lawn-care truck to get waved through by the guard of the hour.

And often as I sit, I become aware of the fact that my car is old, and dirty, and has a pile of discarded Starbucks cups and empty diet coke cans on the floor of the backseat. And I wonder if the guard is secretly judging me for not living up to the Gated Community standards.

Still I don't spend a lot of time worrying about it (time that could be better used playing reruns of  the Gilmore Girls in my head).  And, since I'm generally such a classy person, I feel fairly certain that I belong in that particular neighborhood (or at least my friends house).

But then on Friday, I pulled up to the gate around 8:00pm to let the dog out and check the mail, already in my pajamas (sans bra), missing one hubcap, with a piece of pie on a paper plate on the passenger seat and a Styrofoam cup full of cool whip in the cup holder I thought..."way to keep it classy Keener"

And also,  this place may be a bit out of my league (I'm way more Lorelai than Emily anyway)