It’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged about something other than being sick. It must be update time.

(I am still sick. Still coughing. It still sucks. Yadda yadda.)

Geoffrey bought himself a new toy (the black model, of course). He’s considerably more bouncy & cheerful than he’s been in ages. On the one hand, I’m thrilled for him — it makes me all melty when he’s giddy. On the other hand, my bike is not running right now (the kick-start fell off somewhere on my way home from work one day, and then the battery charger stopped working, so I can’t turn the blasted thing on until I get those items replaced), so I’m irked that I can’t ride mine.

And now for something completely TMI…

Work today sucked, and not in the happy fun way. I had a few horrible coughing fits, and the worst one prompted a couple of people (including my lead) to ask if I was going to be okay, if I needed a break off the phones, etc. I told them the truth — that this is what happens when I don’t take my codeine cough syrup on time, and I would be okay as soon as it kicked in. Relatively speaking, anyway.

There’s good news and bad news this weekend…

Good news: I have a 3-day weekend!
Bad news: I’m too sick to enjoy it.

Good news: The demonspawn will be away at the beach all weekend.
Bad news: The demonspawn (and Dustin) will be sleeping here tonight so they can leave at dawn.

Good news: Tomorrow is our country’s 232nd birthday!
Bad news: For some reason, oodles of idiots will celebrate this by blowing shit up.

I really hate fireworks. Always have. I’d love it if all fireworks were illegal, other than the professional displays. And even those are obnoxious, but at least they only take place briefly, and end at a reasonable hour of the evening…unlike the idiots who buy fireworks to set off for days/nights on end. I have ZERO sympathy for anyone who is injured by fireworks, especially the ones that are illegal in Oregon but are brought across the state border from Washington and blown up here.

Go celebrate our Independence Day by lighting fire to a barbeque or the candles of a birthday cake for America, not explosives.

So after work today, I’m in the grocery store, minding my own business, headed for the checkout with a basket full of stuff. A guy walks by me — I didn’t even get a look at him, except a vague impression that he was about my height — and says, “Pretty hair.” I automatically replied, “Thanks!” but resisted the urge to slow down, turn and gape. Which is why I didn’t get a better look at him.

I should have turned and looked anyway. And if he was cute, flirted. Damn, I am out of practice.

In other news, the upcoming Sunday is my department’s mandatory quarterly meeting. The one they schedule 12 months in advance so you can’t avoid it by requesting a vacation day, and for which missing will ding you to the equivalent of 2 separate absences. Oh yeah, not to mention it’s the one they have at SEVEN FUCKING A.M. on my day off. Claire asked me what sort of things are discussed at the meeting, to merit it being a mandatory weekend work meeting at SEVEN FUCKING A.M. The sad truth, as I told her vehemently is, “Not a fucking THING.” But them’s the breaks.

(Claire is kick-ass wonderful, btw. She’s the best next-door neighbor I could ask for, a really terrific friend, and one of the best moms I’ve ever met. Not to mention her entirely underrated talent for making people feel welcomed and included, which is something I largely suck at. She wrote a totally sweet blog post about me on the 12th, and I have been so absent from the Infobahn that I didn’t even see it until today.)

Last weekend, Anxiety went to the coast with the Red-Headed Stepchild’s family, and so Geoffrey & I had a childfree house for 3 whole days! (Yes, of course we had sex in the living room. *GRIN*) We topped off the weekend with a bit of a splurge at Powell’s, which is almost always the best thing you can do with your clothes on. I got a new Spider Robinson book AND a new Laurell K Hamilton book! YAY!!!

Now I’m going to go hang out with my 6-days-shy-of-1-year-old godson.

My kick-ass, totally awesome new alarm clock (that Geoffrey got me for my birthday!!!) now plays the first minute-ish of Scotty Doesn’t Know.

YAY!!!

It’s been 30 years since I’ve been able to be in Hawaii on my birthday, but one of these days I’ll have to get back there and really celebrate the hell out of it. I have vague memories of being about 6 or 7, and thinking the parade and all the other Kamehameha Day excitement was because of my birthday. I was a special kid.

Yesterday — the lovely Kylanath’s birthday! (hope it was a wonderful one!) — was one of those days when nothing seemed to go right for me. The drive into work was nerve-wracking due to strong wind gusts…and trust me, there’s nothing fun about crossing a bridge with steel grating on a two-wheel vehicle in wind gusts of varying strength and direction. It sure does wake you up, though; I barely needed my coffee after that bit of adrenalin. After an insanely busy day at work where our call volumes were 5 times normal (partly because a bunch of the senior operators called out sick), I got home only to immediately turn around and have to leave. Lyse had a monster migraine and had to go to the ER. We were there for five & a half hours, and didn’t get home until nearly 11pm…which is past my bedtime, anymore.

The one possibly amusing moment of my day yesterday was a phone call from my youngest demonspawn, on her last day of school. She was lucky enough to catch me on my lunch break. There was a ton of background noise, so I had trouble distinguishing exactly what she was saying. It went something like this:

Anxiety: “Can I bring home a biology [garbled word that might be "textbook"] for the summer?”
Me: “Sure.”
Anxiety: “Yay! You have to tell my teacher that it’s okay! I’ll put him on the phone.”
Teacher: “I just need to get your permission on this directly.”
Me: “Sure.”
Anxiety: “Thank you, Mommy! I love you!”

About two whole seconds after the line disconnected, my brain’s review mode kicked in and processed what that garbled word was. It wasn’t “textbook.” It was “tarantula.”

Shit.

(But Happy Birthday to me anyway!)

First, here’s the clock I want for my birthday!!! If it (or a love note announcing its eventual arrival) doesn’t magically appear on my nightstand by June 12th, I’m buying it for myself.

Next, the cutest little boy in the whole universe, my godson, took his first steps today! And his mom blogged about it! Everyone should go read it!

It may get rather quiet around home for the next few days, as I’m dropping Geoffrey at the airport on my way to work in the morning, and he won’t be back until very late Sunday night. Even if he weren’t going to his grandpa’s funeral, I wouldn’t envy him the trip, since he’ll be dealing with summer in St. Louis. Blech.

Now my demonspawn is demanding that I let her get back to uploading piccies on her MySpace. Mm-kay, whatever.

Geoffrey’s last surviving grandparent died this afternoon. It was just a couple of hours after the family got the news that his Grandpa Hugh was being moved to hospice after a serious heart attack, since he was in his 90’s and his health had been failing for a while now. On Thursday, Geoffrey will be flying back to the Midwest for the funeral, and coming back Sunday. I’d go too, but the plane tickets are sucktastically expensive. I wish Geoffrey didn’t have to hang out with his relatives under these circumstances, but I’m glad we can afford to send him.

I’m still alive. More or less. Anyway, it’s been quite the month so far. Let me see what random crap I can update about…

The weather has been either rainy and stupidly chilly, or so warm that I sleep with the balcony door open and a fan blowing on my bed. Very weird weather of late. It’s as if Spring and Summer are arguing over whose turn it is.

And now for something completely TMI…

The next time I need to find something totally awesome online, I’ll just have my Number One Internet Fanboy look for it — again, he sent me a kick-ass e-card, from this hilarious site:

SomeEcards

I especially like this card. And this one. And definitely this one!

Their slogan is kick-ass, too: “for when you care enough to hit send” *snicker*

No matter how tired I am, or what a rotten day it’s been, Jonathan always makes me smile. It still surprises me a little that — just by virtue of holding him & kissing on him & calling him my little buddy — he likes me and wants to glom onto me…or at least have me hold him while he stares transfixedly at the living room decorations, or lunges to grab onto a kitty tail, or makes faces as I feed him a brand-new flavor of Gerber. He’s fascinated by my cell phone, my tongue piercing, my glasses…imagining how things must look to him makes me see things anew, which is damned nifty at times.

And ohmigawd, he is just too damned cute (even in crappy cell-phone pics, which is all I can take at the moment). Here he is, attempting to eat a cell phone:

And my favorite pic of him, which I took from the outdoor side of my sliding glass door while he was on the indoor side:

I’m totally gonzo over this kid — he delights me nearly as much as my own kids ever did, but without all the mixed blessings of parenting!