Randomness

• How come on Little Bear, the toad can't talk but the frog sounds like a professor of diction?
• Does anyone else hate Baby Bear on Sesame Street as much as I do? I would rather listen to Barney all day than ten minutes of that creature.
  
• So a few weeks ago, I ran into the woman who first suggested that I was "lucky" that Peanut wasn't walking yet. We chatted, asking about each other's kids. I told her that no, she isn't walking, but her speech is coming along, and she can even count now, and recognize her numbers. "Oh really? Wow. B-- can't count yet..." (B is 3 months older than Peanut). The feelings I had were wrong, just wrong, I know.
• Did I mention that Peanut not only can count ("On, Ooo, Tee), but she can point to the number and say it? She confuses 7 for 2 and 9 for 6 sometimes, but still. And you should see her try and figure out how to hold up three fingers when she counts to three.
• Don't worry, I haven't gotten a Harvard application yet. She still doesn't realize that she can control where she goes on her scooter, so when she wants to get something across the room (and she can't get there by going backwards--she's big on going backwards) she asks to go "up!" instead or wants me to get it for her.
• I can't find my digital camera, so that's why there are no pictures of her on the scooter posted. The question you should be asking isn't, "How can she misplace an expensive piece of electronics like that?", it is "How did she manage to keep track of something smaller than her head for more than an hour in her house, considering the condition it is in?"
• So we went to Houston last weekend for Big Daddy's big birthday (he's just old, we don't need to use actual numbers anymore). We saw Jennifer and family (Big Daddy was best man in their wedding), which was wonderful. Man, those kids are cute, aren't they?
• On the way home from Houston, we flew from Minneapolis to Madison with Al Franken. He flew coach, carried his own luggage, was gracious signing autographs, and was sweet to Peanut. I was a fan before, but even more so now.
  
• It's really freaking cold here. Well, really cold, anyway. But Big Daddy finally cleaned out the garage, so I can park my car in it. Woohoo!
• Did you realize that my post on the bad sci-fi book got more comments than anything else I've ever posted?
• The state's sex offender website now has addresses (it used to be just a listing by zip code). I knew that across the street and down the block there was some kind of halfway-house/transitional housing, but that didn't really bother me, as they are all over Madison, helping substance abusers, the disabled, etc. Of course, now I see that they are housing a man convicted of first-degree sexual assault of a child. One that the state tried to obtain a sex-offender commitment on after his sentence was complete, as a "sexually violent person", which isn't all that common to do (the petition was denied). We won't be walking over there anymore.
  
• I now have three kittens and a possibly pregnant mama cat in my spare room right now. This is in addition to the three cats and dog already roaming the house. I don't think this officially makes me a crazy cat lady, but it certainly makes me eligible. Anyone looking for a kitten?
• Why is it that I can write wonderful posts (trust me) in my head all day long, but as soon as I sit in front of the computer, they fly right out of my head?
  

Finally

It's time to do some babyproofing.

Peanut's Grandmomma came to visit for Thanksgiving, and brought a new toy. It is a wooden ride-on toy somewhat like a motorcycle. Now, she has one already, a plastic one which was great for her first one because the seat is wide and she could sit on it without tipping. She didn't really know what to do with it, though. Mostly she sat and held her feet up while we pushed her around the house. She likes to sit on it next to other toys or furniture so she can reach them from a different angle. She'll push herself back and forth using the chair.

But, she's been in her stander, and is much stronger now. Strength, of course, is not the only issue. She needs to learn what other babies pick up naturally: how to coordinate all the muscles in your legs to kick from the knee, or take a step.

She's learning.

Yesterday, it all came together and she got on the new scooter with its narrower seat that made it easier for her to push, first with one leg and then with the next, and in the end with both together (this is why her physical therapist ultimately doesn't like these toys). She moved aross the rug. And kept moving. By the end of the day she was moving all the way through the living room, through the dining room and into the kitchen. We'd get her turned around, and she went all the way back. Again and again.

I don't know if you can understand that she really hasn't been able to move at all, no more than rolling over once in each direction (before her last two surgeries, she could roll a few more times, but she was littler and it really didn't do much for her). She can't sit up on her own from a lying-down position. She has been completely dependent on us to get her whatever she wants, to choose a toy or book that would suit her, to figure out whether she wants to sit or lie down. Think about the toddlers you know, and imagine them having to sit in a chair for even an hour while someone tried to figure out what would keep them entertained and stimulated. It's like living permanently with a toddler in an airplane seat. So when Big Daddy and I saw her intently pushing this scooter across the room to get at some blocks she wanted to play with, well, it still brings tears to my eyes.

We had a happy Thanksgiving. How about you?

The Problem

...with reading some old science fiction books is that you feel the need periodically to shout, "They have time travel in 2054 but no cell phones?" and throw the book across the room.

They Just Use Your Mind, And They Never Give You Credit

This job thing? Not going as well as I'd hoped.

But it doesn't matter anymore, because I will no longer have it at the end of next month. Yep, that's right. As I so cleverly wrote in the cover letter I sent with my resume yesterday, my position has been eliminated. This is the nice way of saying that I've been screwed. This isn't because of anything I did or didn't do, it's just a cost-saving measure on the part of the person who hired my company to provide services (and they hired me to provide them). Gosh, that sounds slightly, I don't know, dirty? It's not actually, though I certainly feel like Julia Roberts when Richard Gere threw that money down on the table in Pretty Woman after he reminded her that she was a really just a hooker. Except I'd be happy to take the money.

From day one I felt as if no one wanted me to succeed. Not counting my direct supervisor, of course, and I'm not saying that just because she reads my blog. She hired me because she thought it would be a nice, easy job, a reward for all the crap positions I have taken in the past. It reached the point last week that an employee of the man who hired my company, someone I have to work with every day and who is supposed to take orders from me, threatened to sabatoge the place if I called his boss because he couldn't get the work done. His boss's initial response was, "Well, I wasn't there, I didn't hear him say that".

So while I'm not really thrilled to be starting over, I can't say that I'm particularly heartbroken to leave this particular place. Never in all my life have I worked with so much hostility around me, and that includes the place where I got sexually harrassed on a regular basis (I was 18, and it never occurred to me that it was wrong, as it was the way men treated me normally), and the place where I got physically threatened by people involved in an attempted murder (this was not my fault, I just happened to be the authority figure). Of course, that makes it sound like perhaps I an deluding myself regarding my ability to get along with others, but I swear I'm not. My father was a divorce lawyer, and as a child I had to learn polite ways of dealing with some of the very angry people who would call him up at home demanding he solve a child-custody dispute right then and there. "Um, I'm only eight" didn't tend to dissuade them very often. My first job was in a collection agency, and all subsequent jobs have involved customer service in one form or another. I generally get along with people that I work with. Do your job, and I don't really care what else you do, unless it's gross or something. So these last few months have been a bit of a trial.

Anyway, I sent out a resume, I will send out a few more, and I have an offer to stay with my company that I am considering. I have tried to figure out any possible way I could just stay home again, but it's too late in the season to grow all our produce in the backyard and start raising chickens, so I guess I'll keep working. Unless somebody wants to pay me to write this blog daily... trust me, you can't pay me much less than I make now.

I won't even get in to the family stuff. I am related to some complete loons, mean ones, and that's all that can really be said.

The good news is that Peanut is doing very well. Her follow-up visit to the orthopedic surgeon was positive, and he continues to be pleased with the results of her surgeries. Her speech therapist thinks she is right on track, with as many words as you would expect her to have between her signs and her vocalizations. Just when I thought I was going to have to buckle down and start teaching her to count (several of the kids in her playgroup can, and one kid could sing the alphabet song at 20 months), she started counting the blocks in the stack she made (7--that's as high as she can reach). She has a stander* that she is in each day for 20 minutes or so, and she's getting stronger each time. I started taking her to swim lessons, and while she's terrified of the instructor, a very nice man from San Antonio with a long black ponytail, she is loving the water. I wish we could get out and see her friends more, but we'll work that out soon, I hope.

So how are you all doing?

* Not quite like hers, but it will give you the idea

Just The Most Dramatic Part

When the worst part of your day is not the time you spend burying the carcass of the cute bunny your dog caught, killed, and started to eat in your backyard, you know it is time to drink heavily.