Ringing in the New Year "Alone"

Our plans for this fabulous evening kind of flopped and I've been in the funk all day anyway, so we're spending yet another fantastically exciting New Year's on the couch. Just another reminder (the day after my birthday, conveniently) that we're getting old. Well, I decided I was going to combat this funk with some "me" time. Hmmmmm...I have a portable DVD player and new bubble bath. Twilight and the tub were calling my name.

I arrive upstairs and am chatting with my newly neglected Matriarch cat while I park the DVD player on the sink. I reached down to start the bath water and realize I've been in this funk long enough to result in a really nasty film in the tub. Darn. There goes some of the joy of my me time, sucked right down the drain with the comet.

I finally got some scalding water running into the clean tub and was just about to start pouring the bubble bath when in bounded the offspring.

"Mommy! What are you DOING? I don't want to go to bed!"
"This isn't for you, it's for me." I replied.
"Are you going to take a shower?" She inquired.
"No, I'm going to take a bath." I answered.
"What?" This is how often I've had time to enjoy a bubble bath in the last three years. The concept is totally foreign to her.

"I'm going to watch!" She declared, quite proudly.
"Punkin, Mommy really wants to take a bath alone. And besides, this movie I'm watching will scare you." I mean, she's scared of Veggie Tales sometimes. Surely she won't endure Twilight, which was kind of the idea.
"That's ok, Mommy, I'll be alone with you." My hope of enjoying my bath was closely following the comet.

So I spent the next twenty minutes "enjoying" a bubble bath to the tune of Twilight in the background of a two year old "washing" me and throwing rubber ducks into my bubbles, accompanied by the intoxicating fragrance of "stress relief" mint bath foam. We ended our year's vacation with a "swim" in Bill and Connie's garden tub in our bathing suits, so I'm not sure why I expected to end the year any differently. Oh well, at least she's cute.

Oops...December got away

Wow. Joy Haser fussed at me last night for not writing (thanks, Joy, I needed that!) and I signed on to realize that I do indeed suck at life and have not written during the entire month of December. That is lame. Just want to throw that out there.

I guess the most interesting event for the month has been the new addition to our family. The offspring played us like a bunch of fools and was rewarded with a kitten for Christmas. Since Thanksgiving she has asked for nothing else. When I tried to convince her that Santa could not carry live animals on his sled and suggested she pick a special toy as a backup, she replied, "I don't really need any toys, Mommy, I already have a lot. All I really need is my own kitty." Player.

Friends tried to help:

Liz: "Gracie, you already have a kitty. What about Polly?"
Grace: "No, that's Mommy's kitty, I need my own."
Liz: "Well, you can have your own dog. Nobody else likes Daisy." (I'm sad to say that she nailed that one.)
Grace (complete with eyeroll): "I can't hold my big dog. I need a little kitty."

Thanks anyway, Liz.

So the days flew by (without any blogging) and I finally figured we were stuck and better get over to the pound. I realize the child doesn't have to have everything she wants, but it was real hard not to succumb when there was only one thing. Plus, I love cats. I mean, it's not like her request was for a pony or her own island in the Caribbean or something. So...the hunt began December 21 and ended with Diego on the 25th.



Who names a cat Diego? A two-year-old with a Dora fetish, that's who. How do you think Polly got her name? From her two-year-old previous owner, who apparently wanted a parrot. But in the grand scheme of things, Diego turned out to be a pretty good name considering all the alternatives.

See, the kid waited till Christmas Eve (after aforementioned male feline had already been secured from the local shelter, tested negative for aids/leukemia, and gone into hiding at Grammy's) to mention to us that she wanted a girl kitty. Through clenched teeth I muttered "You should have told Santa you wanted your kitty to be a girl!"

Christmas morning came, and when I heard the child waking up, I hurried to stuff the live present into its carrier and toss it under the tree. It hated this process and began screaming. Yes, I said screaming. And no, I didn't mean meowing. I ran the kid downstairs and she walked with wide eyes slowly toward the tree.

"What is that, Mommy?"
"I don't know, Santa brought it, what do you think it is?" I asked.
"A cat."
"Probably so!"
"I'm scared of it."

Awesome. Maybe we won't need to keep up the Santa charade if she's scared of the gifts he delivers. Christmas just got cheaper! We finally let Screaming Mimi out of his cage and do you know what the first thing she asked me was? (That is, after the initial shock and terror wore off.)

"Is it a girl kitty?"
"No, baby, you didn't tell Santa you wanted a girl until he already left the North Pole with this boy kitty. What should we name him?"
"Maggie." I spent the next thirty minutes combating every girl name she could throw at me and trying to steer her in the direction of boy names. It finally came to this:

"Honey, these names you're picking are all for girl kitties. Can't you think of any names a little boy might have?"
The answer was epic:
"Yeah...ummm...casserole."

Seriously? It's been months since we've even eaten a casserole. Where on earth does she come up with this stuff? It seems by popular opinion that we should have kept the name. I just didn't think I could do it. Luckily my mom talked her into naming some boy cartoons she watches, since her brain is apparently void of all possible choices of male names. On this prompt she responded with "Diego" so Diego he is.

I'm sure this event in our lives will prompt many blogs in the future. Hopefully something will prompt more than I wrote in December...

It'll be 2010 in a little while...let's try this again, shall we?