Just not a party sort of girl...

...when it comes to birthdays, I mean.

For toddlers. Or preschoolers.

Think about it -- when you were 2, 3 or 4, did your mom and dad attend birthday parties with you? Did they sit around making forced conversation with a bunch of equally uncomfortable parents? Did they participate in all the games and festivities?

Mine didn't. BECAUSE BACK THEN WE DIDN'T HAVE BASHES FOR TOTS INVOLVING FREAKING GYMBOREE OR JUMP ZONES OR FIRE TRUCKS OR OTHER EQUALLY HIDEOUS FORMS OF ENTERTAINMENT THAT MAKE ONE THINK OF JABBING STRAIGHT PINS UNDER ONE'S FINGERNAILS.

Back then, the parties started around kindergarten or first grade and your mom dropped you off at someone's house -- or maybe the roller rink -- and then picked you up a couple hours later. (Or maybe the next morning, after you sat up giggling all night with your girlfriends.)

If your mom did stick around, it was because the birthday girl was the daughter of her best friend and they mixed up a couple of gin and tonics and smoked their ciggies nonchalantly while their offspring, armed with sharp implements, lurched toward a poster of a donkey.

God, please spare me any further celebrations for little people who can't even tell you how freaking old they are.

Please spare me the expectation that parents also must attend these blasted, overblown events.

In the blessed days of old, a birthday party meant a free afternoon while the host/hostess assumed responsibility for the party-goers.

So --

If you can afford to rent out a football stadium for your 3-year-old, then you can damn well afford to hire a couple of extra nannies to manage the little darlings, thereby exempting the parents from the torture of sticking around and making awkward conversation with one another as they try to ignore the screams of the toddlers terrified by the fire truck's obnoxious blaring horn.

Hey, when your kid turns 5, call me. I'll drop mine off at your place and go browse through a bookstore during the festivities.

But please, I beg you, do not ask me to dig out yet another pair of non-holey socks so that I can romp through an inflatable wonderland with the birthday boy and a dozen or so other toddlers who are accompanied their own shoeless parents.

Universal sign among women that it's going to be a bad day:

Your desk boasts a four-pack of cranberry juice and a box of Azo.

Can I go home yet?

You know you're a southern wife/mom when...

... on getting married, you move into your husband's house and discover it won't be easy convincing him that the tangled cluster of deer antlers on the fireplace mantel isn't what you had in mind for home decor.

... you spend an evening at your husband's ex-wife's house so that you, he, she and her spouse can ceremoniously present your stepson with his first hunting gun & gear.

... on learning that you're pregnant, your husband excitedly plans a nursery theme based on "little woodland creatures" with complementary camo bedding. You aren't yet sure whether you're having a boy or girl.

Don't believe me? Take a gander at Arkansas Reunion on YouTube.

(Had trouble getting the direct link to the video to work. But it's easy to find.)

Tagged...

...by Colleen to disclose six weird things about myself:

1.) I hate antiques. Too big, dark and ... brooding. Because of this loathing, I fantasize about getting rid of my husband's hall tree. I hate it. He knows it.

2.) I hate knick-knacks. Dust-collectors, all of them. Yuck.

3.) I'm addicted to People magazine. And US. And I read Go Fug Yourself every day over coffee.

4.) I find pork chops revolting.

5.) I have to read exactly 30 minutes before I can go to sleep.

6.) I still love Erasure. And Depeche Mode. And now Gabriel & Dresden.

Bonus: 7.) Despite the above-mentioned music preferences, my radio is always set to the classic country station. Always.

Longing for spring...

...and this is why:

I called the neighbor...

...and explained that we have this...thing...about sleep. i.e. we get really testy and crazy when deprived of it.

(In other words, if I had known your dog were in agony, and wasn't just being annoying, I wouldn't have leapt from my bed, tripping over my own dog, to yank open a window and scream into a rainstorm.)

It's just our son sleeps so lightly that I could stand in the backyard and yawn and his little eyelids would flutter open. I know every inch of the floors in our house -- which ones creak, which don't, and just how to hop-scotch safely to our bedroom without waking the wee one.

But I digress.

Did I mention that the neighbor woman is a widow? That the dog is 14? That it's her daughter's dog? And that she likely will have to put it to sleep tomorrow?

I am cursed. I will be known as the woman who shrieks at poor sick animals wracked with pain.

Just watched Little Miss Sunshine, however, which boosted my mood considerably (was in hysterics during the dance scene) -- despite all this blasted rain.

Great movie.

As for the weather, if I don't see some sun soon, I may very well wander into a veterinary practice and yell at all the ailing animals there too. Because by then -- I WILL HAVE LOST MY SANITY! This weather is awful. Started raining Thursday night and hasn't quit since.

I'm good for one day of wet, gray weather and that's about my max. So yeah, we're way past what I can handle given my pitifully low seratonin reserves.

Today I went to the gym just for the bright lights, music and noise. (OK, yeah, and the whirlpool.)

How to feel like an ass...

So your neighbor's dog has been barking incessantly the past several days. It's a little white yip-yappy thing, and you -- well, you're partial to big dogs. REAL DOGS.

So this little disattached mop-thing next door won't shut up, and even worse, he's awakened your 2-year-old four or five times in the past couple of days.

Last night, he woke up your kid twice. And you got so mad you screamed, "HUSH!" out your bedroom window. Granted, that's actually pretty polite for you, given your fondness for cussing.

The second time the dog yaps your child from slumber, hubby goes out onto the front porch and yells, "SHUT UP!"

And then the next day, you get this note from your neighbor -- a really nice, articulate, apologetic note -- about how her dog has some horrible infection and it can't go to the bathroom without yapping in pain and how the vet keeps encouraging her to put it down.

And you feel like an utter bitch for having shrieked like a raving madwoman from your bedroom window to a DYING DOG that is in some sort of bathroom purgatory.

ARGH.

Who's that big guy...

...lumbering through my house?

Seriously, it's strange, after a fall of absences, to have Hubs here on the weekends again. Not that I'm complaining -- we're thrilled to have him back on a regular basis.

It's just that you don't realize how you fall into these little routines, and then suddenly there's this extra person who doesn't get that library time comes after naptime which follows lunchtime which follows morning playtime/cleaning time.

(Or that naptime falls conveniently around the Saturday repeat of What Not To Wear and that the TV is MINE during this blessed hour.)

He's catching on though. And tonight, he's whipping up a pot of venison chili -- yay! I have missed that man's chili.

OK, back to What Not to Wear. Christina is learning to buy clothes that don't give the girls too much freedom...

More blahness...

...rain and more rain. And when it isn't raining, it's gray. I HATE gray.

I have an insatiable need for sunlight, a craving that often drives Hubs batty.

Oh, and as for the realtors who've had the misfortune to take me on -- well, let's just say their relief at depositing me on the doorstep of an appropriately sunny home has been damn near tangible.

When Hubs and I moved to San Antonio in the fall of 2004, it took two weekends of house-hunting before I finally deemed one particular place to be light enough to consider.

And mind you, we were only looking to rent at the time.

"Nope," I declared several times. "This is a cave. I can't live in a cave."

Hubs, on the other hand, loves a dimly lit room. He couldn't understand my lack of interest in houses that boasted only a sliver of sunshine.

"But look at all this storage space. This is perfect."

"No way. If you make live here, the Tootie-post-partum experience will seem like a freaking Pollyanna picnic compared to my maternity leave this go-round. I cannot deal with gray. I cannot sit in the dark house, hormonally challenged, nursing a newborn, weeping over weather forecasts. Give me sun. Give me light. Give me a house that has decently sized windows and more than one per room, for God's sake."

By the time we moved back here, he had learned.

"No," he kept telling our realtor, "she won't like that. Too dark."

One house we didn't even enter, due to a lack of windows.

Besides, even before we made the rounds here, I'd already settled on the perfect place, based solely on some photos sent by friends of ours.

Big picture window, flanked by two large rectangular ones, in the living room. Bay windows in the kitchen. French doors and two additional windows in the master bedroom.

Light. Lots of it.

Sold.

We've never yet covered the living room window, which the means our neighbors are treated each night to the Crazy Family Show.

I don't care. I hate drapes or curtains or whatever you choose to call them. Blinds? Marginally acceptable. At least you can yank them up and leave them there. So let the neighbors gaze upon Hubs' ripped, stretched-out boxers in nightly horror. Because when I walk into my living room each morning, I find a space already filled with sunshine.

Except for the last several days.

Am at the end of my patience. And February looms. Ugh.