I think I would make a good Tweeter

I also think of random things to say, but a lot of them can't be developed into a full post, but stuff that I just want to say.

Thanksgiving was great. It's nice to be far away from family. I know! Not what is usually said. One of these years we are going to drop in my brother, but while he's living currently in Denver, it would require a plane ride instead of a car trip. I don't know how snow worthy the magic school bus is.

Fiona was her usual picky self. Not exactly what I would term a Thanksgiving feast. It was probably due to the fact that she had a hold of a Wheat Thins box shortly before dinner. Actually we should call it lunch because, between Dave and the girls, no one wants to wait until afternoon and since it was just us, I figured why not. I had to post a picture of my plate in comparison. Since it's just the four of us, I made turkey breast. When I was in charge of my family's 20+ people Thanksgiving, I made two turkey breasts. I don't like dealing with the carcass of a regular bird, plus whether to stuff it or not and what to do with the dark meat that no one eats. I got an 8lb breast and we are going to use the leftovers for freezer meals and some really good sandwiches.
Then Fiona had the nerve to make nasty noises over my cherry pie. This while TD, Buttercup and I were trying to find ways to rationalize eating that very pie for the next 4 meals straight.

I headed out around 7am today to pick up a few things at the stores around us. This has worked well for me before because usually the crazy ( no offense) up in the middle of the night people are worn out and gone, but most of the good deals are still there. I started with Target. It was a mad house. I wasn't prepared because the parking lot didn't look that bad. There wasn't anything good left and the lines stretched around the store! It wasn't worth it to wait in line for Paul Blart, Mall Cop for $5.99 for an hour and a half. So then I headed to Walmart. They were so much better! I got a good parking spot, I found the really cheap DVDs and even had a chance to grab a gallon of milk. (Side note, I read that the McCaugheys septuplet house only buys 5 gallons of milk a week. Either they ration the milk or our family has some serious milk issues. I picked up our 5th gallon this week and it's only Friday.) I didn't have to wait in line at all and got a bunch of really cheap DVDs.

I was headed to Kohl's for some church clothes for Buttercup but their parking lot was crazy and I remembered how bad their lines usually are. What I want for her wouldn't be a hot ticket item for anyone and their sale lasts all weekend, so I will try again later.

Then Walgreens had buy one get one free Webkinz. I bought my allotted four. Those are the best gifts to have hidden away for an unexpected birthday party or when someone's had a really bad day. They were the things I really wanted anyway. They are much more expensive than last year. Last year they were $5.99 and this year they are $9.99. That's fine, I wasn't up for much spending on anything else anyway. We found out on Tuesday that we had to have our a/c installed on Wednesday in order to take advantage of our $1,000 rebate. So the debate was over on when we would have our a/c installed. I asked TD if we should wrap it and open it up on Christmas morning. It was the most expensive thing I have ever bought that I couldn't either drive or live in.

Scared

I don't think you can ever be truly scared until you are a parent. Before then, it's things like being scared about failing in school, or scared that your parents will find out you did something. After you have kids, well I think this quote expresses it best, it's something like becoming a mother (or a parent) is like letting your heart walk outside of your body.
I never really got scared when we had Buttercup. She was such a good baby, honestly, if every baby was like her, people would be having 4 or 5 of her. The only time she ever scared me was the night we brought her home from the hospital. I nursed her at 10:30pm and then fell into the sleep of a new mom that was in labor for 24 hours and then spent a restless night at the hospital. I woke up at 5:30am realizing that the expected every two hour wakening did not happen. I sat bolt up right in bed. I checked on her and she was still sleeping after all that time. See, I told you she was a good baby.
Fiona, on the other hand, was trouble from the get go. At about 17 months she had a non febrile seizure, for no apparent reason. To this day, I still don't know why she had it. All that I can say is in that moment, when I picked her up off the floor and her lips were turning blue and I was yelling for TD, I felt horribly helpless. Luckily this only lasted for half a second and my CPR training kicked in and I had her breathing before the paramedics got there 3 minutes later. Of course, the next couple of months, I kept sneaking into her room while she slept, to watch her chest rise and fall.
That is a tie with the hour and a half TD and I spent in the surgical waiting room at Doernbecher's. The way her cancer presented, a mediastinal mass, made diagnosis difficult. Her silver dollar pancake tumor was laying on top of her heart and lungs and made sedation unwise for tests. The only time I ever left her during her treatment was when I made TD sit with her for her bone marrow biopsy without full sedation. I just couldn't do it. I sucked it up after that. Her anesthesiologist, who I will ever have hateful feelings for, came in to explain to us that the weight of the tumor on her lungs was a major concern. The naturally occurring muscle tension in her lungs would be diminished by the sedation and could cause the weight of the tumor to smash her lungs, something they would be unable to fix. He then told us he was scared. Doctors should never tell you they are scared when they are going to be cutting into your 4 year old baby. EVER.
They came out half way through the procedure to tell us that while they were able to cut a neck lymph node out of her while she was awake, they were unable to get a diagnosis from it and would have to put her under to biopsy the actual tumor. And thus, the 90 minutes of total terror. When the surgeon finally came out , he told us that he got some good samples. The first words out of my mouth were, " She made it?" That should've been what he led with.
Luckily for me, our visit to the hospital this week dials back the scare significantly. While we are about 21 months from calling her a long term survivor, the doctor said the likelihood of a relapse is insignificant now and she sees nothing but good things for our girl. While I know that we are never certain, this pep talk from the doctor really helped.

I Am So Weak

Yeah, so how many days did it take before I broke? I went to Target to size up Junior clothes for Buttercup, poor girl, she's tall and skinny like her Mom and her struggle with clothes has already started. Meaning, she's outgrowing her 10/12 sized shirts, but the 14/16 are made for girls much wider than she is. I thought maybe XS Junior sizes might work. They are for scrawny teenage girls and let's face it, Buttercup is over 5 feet tall.
Being a typical girl I have a hard time resisting the lure of Target. I wandered over to the Christmas section. And I caved! I bought wrapping paper, beautiful Mickey and Minnie giving each other presents paper. Just wandering through the aisles made me so happy. Companies really pull out the stops when it comes to things for Christmas. Want to know what I am really a sucker for? Those gift baskets, especially food. I love the little pots of jams. When TD worked for the region, based in Seattle, when we lived in Portland, his boss would send us Harry and David towers! It was awesome.
I also got some boxes so I could start wrapping presents. See, I am three for three when it comes to lame holiday seasons. I actually mean lame in its literal sense. My right foot hurts and my brother, the medical genius, has diagnosed either tendonitis (keep your fingers crossed) or a stress fracture. I really hope it's not a fracture, but I am an athletic, tall, white woman with high arches.... it's a miracle I haven't gotten one before. Remember, my first Christmas here in Texas I had the closest to an ankle break without actually breaking it and then last year I had the surgery. Hopefully I just strained something in my foot after a crazy Pilates class on Thursday. By crazy, I mean they are a lot more gung ho than I am.
So, as of right now, I have my foot propped up, with an ice pack. Here's to hoping that I will wake up in the next day or two miraculously recovered.

Too Much Too Soon

I LOVE Christmas! Absolutely love it. It's my favorite time of the year and I keep it in mind all year when I am collecting bargains as potential Christmas presents for the girls. But I HATE this time of the year. You know, when Target sets out their Christmas stuff at the same time they are setting out their Halloween items.

Don't get me wrong. I feel like the second my first piece of pie has been eaten on Thanksgiving Day, we can bust out the Christmas tree and put the decorations up. But until then, I think it's because I hate being manipulated and overly encouraged to spend money. Right now, I have enough things to make the girls' Christmas fabulous, I just need to buy stocking stuffers and Christmas Eve PJs and slippers and that's it. It's about time for me to start avoiding stores simply so I am not tempted to spend money. They have so many cute things and so many great deals that I feel like I am missing out on, but we really don't need them. Plus all of the Christmas decor items make me want to spend money too. I wish they would just wait. I want to enjoy the girls loving Halloween, I want to enjoy Pie day, I mean Thanksgiving, with my family. I like making the meal and I really like eating it. But I feel like we are being forced to rush past these holidays because they aren't big money makers for the stores.

I can foresee this being a big problem this year. Stores are wanting to make some serious cash this year to make up for the recession problems, but I sure don't need to help them.

Busy, Busy

I haven't had as much to say lately. Now that we are adjusting for our health care going up, we figured out that we had probably better replace the a/c unit as well. Nice, huh? Not that we have an extra $10,000 to throw around. This is another one of those things, like car service and dentists where you have to rely on someone to assure you that, yes, you do need to cough up large amounts of money to fix something that may or may not be broken. I mean, if your tooth doesn't hurt you have to believe them when they say you have a cavity. Well, we have an a/c unit that is mismatched with the condensor upstairs. Which size do we really need? I have heard that too large of a unit and you aren't doing yourself any good. Then, what SEER do we need, what is a SEER? Which sizes are eligible for the tax credit? Ugh, it's been several years since I have taken science, but it seems like I need a degree to figure this stuff out. I really do need to call my brother, who is training in HVAC, but he's the newlywed, and who knows if he'll answer his phone!
Buttercup is getting picked on at school. She desperately wants to be friends with the cool girls because they have termed everyone else tattletales or know it alls. So she is willing to listen to how ugly she is, how badly she dresses, how thick her arm hair is ( I mean, really?) so that she can be in the presence of these two idiot girls. But the one, the queen bee, was the only one who was in her class last year and is in her class now. And her excuse for taking all of this is that she's known her the longest. So, we keep having discussions about how she doesn't have to put up with it, how she's worth more than that. You know, if we were a movie, I would take her for a killer haircut, get her contacts and a new wardrobe and presto! She would be the cool girl. Sad for her that her mom doesn't work that way.
At least life is never dull.