The worst 10 minutes of my life.

K (my partner in crime) stayed home sick today and went to go grab the boy from school this afternoon. Lil b (who is almost 3) was happily playing with his laptop in his room, so I went to go figure out why my left contact was freaking out. After a few seconds of removing, rinsing, putting it back in, removing, etc. I heard a really loud thud from the other room. Immediately I thought that little dude had either dropped something or managed to kill himself somehow, so I ran into his room.

He wasn't there. I looked in the living room and kitchen. Not there, either. Not in his brother's room. Not in the bathroom or the laundry room. Not on the other side of my bed. WTF? By this point I'm calling his name, telling him that this is NOT funny and he needs to come out right now.

And then I saw the the door was unlocked.

So I stuck my head outside and looked in the hall. No sign of him. I threw on a hoodie (I wasn't wearing a shirt, just a bra) and skipped the shoes and ran outside.

From the front door there are a few ways to go. On either side there are metal stairs with concrete at the bottom. A fall down either one of those is going to be an ER visit at best. Then there's the landing to the parking garage full of people who can't be arsed to go slow or look where they're going. Further up is the elevator which goes all the way up to the roof of the parking garage.

I figured he went to the parking garage to look for K, so I ran out there first. No one. So then I thought that he'd maybe gone down the stairs (which is what we do when I let him walk to go places) so I ran down the set closest to the apartment and the set down the hall. Then I thought maybe he went up, since I never let him do that. So I ran up to the third floor. Nothing.

I went back in the apartment to see if maybe he'd been hiding and came out when he realized that no one was looking for him. That would have been too easy, though.

I ran back to the parking garage, thinking maybe he was on the other side of a car and I just hadn't seen him. There are a couple of cars exactly like ours in the garage, so maybe he was trying to get into one of them. I searched our level, looking under cars and yelling for him. The whole time I was running around and freaking out, I was speed-dialing K, who was not picking up. (Turns out his phone never went off. Fucking Verizon.)

By the time I came out of the parking garage the second time, my vocal cords were shot and I was hyperventilating and taking out my phone to call 911 because it'd been long enough that he could be anywhere at that point. And then I heard, from my right, the sound of a very small person running and crying. So I ran down the landing and turned the corner to find lil b, with no coat and no shoes, running toward me. I scooped him up, and he said "I was in the elevator! I was lost! I pushed the buttons and I waited on you and I was scared!"

So we came back inside and I collapsed into a coughing, hoarse mess on the floor and had a nervous breakdown with little dude on my lap having a nervous breakdown of his own. And of course K and B walked in at that point.

Yet another reason I want OUT of this apartment. The doors are impossible to childproof and we can't install more locks up higher or switch out the knobs.

I have hunch that this will be funny in like 12 years when he's dating and I get to retell the story. But right now? Yeah, not so much.

note: this was written around 12pm today. it's just making its way over here some 12 hours later.

We finally signed papers for an offer and put down earnest money (*choke*) yesterday.

All of this slow-crawl stuff has made me twitchy. We just got the last W2 on Saturday so we could estimate the taxes. We only estimated because the student loan place isn't going to have their form ready until Thursday... way to wait til the last minute, there. But if they accept the offer, it'll be a whirlwind of "omg get it done NOW" for the next two weeks.

Please, please don't let the seller be the asshole that his agent made him out to be. I'm banking on the whole "grumpy seller" story being just a trick of the seller's agent to keep us from making a ridiculously low offer. I hope I'm not wrong. (ETA: I was wrong. Goddamnit. Time to counter-counter.)

Anyway. I'm not going to think about that any more until someone tells me what they had to say to the offer.


In other news, got invited to run Kara last night on Draka, which turned out to be a lot of fun despite dying a bunch. The group was mostly a family (mom, dad, daughter, uncle, some other unidentified family members) from Australia, and none of us were really geared for a Kara run, so it was just for shits and giggles. Still, we took down the Big Bad Wolf in Opera and I got a purple gun. Not bad for my first run, right?

And I came in 3rd on the damage meter. ^^


Unrelatedly, I've started trying to cook something new and interesting after every trip to the grocery store. It's not like I don't have a dozen cookbooks and the internet at my disposal. Why in the hell should I be cooking spaghetti or hamburgers or whatever over and over again? Exactly.

So, I made some raspberry chicken from a book recipe (book recipes make me nervous because they don't come with reviews... viva le interwebs!) that turned out well. I was expecting something light and sweet, but it turned out to be spicy. It was still pretty damn good, though, and I think I'm going to steal the marinade to use instead of store bought raspberry-chipotle sauce on the pork loin I normally do.

I also made some lemon spinach cous cous which... did not turn out as well. Ah, well. You win some, you lose some.

I'm feeling a bit random today. Obviously. Time to go entertain small children.

Think twice before you touch my girl

So, I have a friend. My friend has a relatively new boyfriend. My friend and her boyfriend are having issues of various sorts.

The boyfriend, in a bid to do... something... decided that he would email (well, MySpace message) a few of her closest friends and ask for advice on how to "help her through this difficult time" or somesuch. I don't know the exact wording because I didn't actually get one of these messages.

Why? Because, apparently, he considers me her "go get 'em girl" who would probably tell him to go fuck himself if I thought that they were fighting. Now, keep in mind that he did message her extremely loyal very best friend who has recently been to a mental hospital (not a joke, I'm serious) and her scary bald-guy friend that her ex-husband felt was some sort of big threat. But not me.

Which means I'm more intimidating.

... SWEET! I've always wanted to be intimidating! Gr. GRRR I SAY! Fear me!

Of course, he's right. I would have been tempted to say "well, you know, it'd probably help her a lot if you'd stop being a passive-aggressive asshole. But that's just a theory." I wouldn't have actually said it. But I'd have considered it.

But yes, I'm enjoying being intimidating. GR.

Mommyness

B (my oldest, who is 7) came home on Wednesday all excited. "Tomorrow is backwards day!" he told me. I was a little confused, because normally they do their spirit day things on Fridays. So I asked if he was sure. Of COURSE he was sure. Positive? Yep. Not on Friday? No, already! Ok.

So, Thursday morning we put on a button-up shirt backward and buttoned it up. He also wore his watch upside down and put his backpack on his front.

Thursday afternoon he came out of school with his shirt on right, looking all dejected. I immediately flashed to what it would have been like for me to get the wrong day and wear my clothes backward when I wasn't supposed to when I was in second grade. Oh, the mortification! I would have been praying all day for a hole to crawl into. It would have been horrible!

So I asked what was wrong, and he said he'd had a bad day. While he re-tied his shoes, I asked about the shirt. "Oh, it's not backward day today after all, so I turned it around," he said, casually.

"Is that why you had a bad day?" I asked. "Because you went in with your shirt backward on the wrong day?"

He gave me his patented are-you-on-something? look and said, "No. I just turned my shirt around. I had a bad day because I lost my Spiderman watch."

Oh, well, right then. Heh.

I am totally confused as to how two people who were painfully shy, dorky kids managed to produce a kid that honestly doesn't much care what anyone thinks and is naturally social. I'm going to take it as a sign that we're doing something right, though.

He's also shaping up to be a bit of a leader, which is slightly less surprising to me. He is the oldest child, after all. But the game of chase from last year (where three little girls chased him all recess long every day) has now turned into a giant game of capture the flag, minus the flag. The boys have their "castle" and the girls have their "fort" on opposite ends of the playground equipment, and they try to sneak over and capture each other's space.

"... so, then [girl] snuck into our castle, so we all had to slide down the slides and run away, but [boy] went and snuck into their fort so they all ran away too and we got our castle back. And then I gave out medals to people who were brave. I gave [boy] the sticker from my banana, too, as an extra reward. He's putting it in his roly-poly house."

"So, what, you're the leader of the boys' team or something?"

"Nah. I'm just the one with all of the ideas. It's because I read a lot of books, I think."

That he does. And our local library doesn't have a lot in his reading range, so I'm going to have to go buy some more soon. Yay for used bookstores and Barnes and Noble gift cards...

In other news, today is catch-up-on-housework day. Woo?

Apparently it is required by law that one discloses if a property has ever been used as a meth lab to potential buyers. Which, I mean, I totally can get behind that because I'm not keen on the idea of owning a house that's a health hazard. But on the other hand, what person in their right mind is going to be like "Please pay me lots of dollars for this house, and also, I... I mean... my friend whipped up some illegal narcotics in the basement! Hope you don't mind."

Exactly. Kind of funny that they have to have a clause in the contract for it, though.

Kind of like how the townhouse in Cordova had a clause in the lease agreement where we had to agree that we understood that they would not be cleaning our fridge for us. No kidding. Though, I wish I could find an apartment that WOULD clean my fridge. How awesome would that be?

So, last weekend I went to the eye doctor to check on the contacts and get my eyes dilated. I've never had the dilation done, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. He put the drops in and then sent me out to the waiting room, where Becca and I read gossip rags and made fun of people's outfits for a while. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was not expecting to be sitting around and have my left eye suddenly go *poink!* It was like something out of a cartoon.

So, I was sitting around looking like this: O.o

The other one caught up at some point and we did the exam and I don't have any of whatever they were looking for. So yay. When I got home, Krys informed me that I was still "fully dilated" which made me giggle. It's been a while since I've had to worry about being fully dilated.

A few hours later I went to the dentist. I made the mistake of mentioning to the lady who was cleaning my teeth that I'd done the dilation a few hours previously and she made me wear one of the face masks over my eyes. On one hand, it was kind of nice. I'm not a big fan of bright lights in my eyes on a normal basis, so cleanings generally bother the hell out of me.

Ooooon the other hand, I looked like a dork. Nothing new there, though, I suppose.

Anyway, I apparently have two wee bitty cavities that I have to go get fixed on Thursday. First cavities I've had in 20 years, so I guess I can't complain. Especially with the amount of crap I've put my poor, poor teeth through. I keep waiting for my body to rise up and take revenge on me for surviving on candy bars and Dr. Pepper throughout high school and college...

And that train of thought brings me to the following quote:

You see life is like that...we change, that's all. You see, the guy I am now is not the guy I was then. If the guy I was then met the guy I am now, he'd beat the shit out of me. Those are the facts. Stevo, SLC Punk

Of course, in my case it would be "If the girl I am now met the girl I was then, I'd sit her down and give her a good talking to and possibly a glass of wine."

There are so many things that I want to remember later that I'm forgetting now, so I can't write them down. Frustrating. Of course, I'll remember them when I'm doing something that makes me unable to sit down with the computer, like cleaning the shower or sleeping. Dammit.

In other news: The stupid tax paperwork can come in ANY SECOND NOW. Seriously. I'd like to get all of this over with, one way or another.

Reiteration

So, check it out... here I am again at ye olde Blogger, where all of this started in the first place. Weird. It actually looks kind of slick now, some 5 years later.

I guess that's what selling out to Google will do for you. (I kid, I kid! Mostly.)

Basically, I'm starting this with the intention of reposting stuff that I'm already posting elsewhere so that my favorite blogger can read it from work. Anyone who stumbles by is welcome to read along as well, of course. And talk to me! I miss adult interaction. ;)

Why not just use the site I actually own for this? Well, see, everyone kind of knows about that one and I'm perfectly happy being sort of e-anonymous. You'd be amazed at the sort of people who STILL hit that site despite it being down for like 2 years. Besides, I might have some sort of uses for it later that don't involve a blog. I'm still deciding.

What can you expect to find here? I promise a lot of random, an occasional deep thought, and very few memes or quiz results.

Who knows where this is going to go. Maybe I'll end up posting more here than anywhere else. Let's jump in and see.