The Old Maid.....And The Young Boy

Anyone who has ever played me in a game of Old Maid knows I always loose. I told my nanny friend Melissa this once and she didn't believe me.....at first. We frequently took our group of charges down to the coffee house on the corner where we all indulged in delicious treats over games and card playing. Time after time I lost at Old Maid. She soon believed me and succumbed to my claim of perpetual bad luck.

I remember loosing at the game since I was a child. I guess I should have seen it coming. Perhaps the Old Maid cards are more like Tarot cards for me.

Flash forward to today. I was with my favorite boys, David and Chris, looking for some games to play together. First was Crazy Eights, which Chris won. Then came Old Maid. "Oh, no, the game I always loose!" I cried. David laughed and asked why I always loose Old Maid. I didn't want to tell him that I believe I'm cursed, so I told him I didn't know, just luck I guessed.

So we sat down to play. David announced, after I dealt the cards, that he just got some bad luck. Clearly letting us all know who had the Old Maid card. But that's what its like to play cards with children. Chris didn't hold back either; laying all his cards on the table face up to search for his pairs. Surprisingly, David seemed happy to have the Old Maid card.

We played the game. Me picking from David's hand. He held onto that Old Maid. Keeping it in the same place, right in front of his stack. Closest to him and furthest from me. I could see him doing this so I asked him to fan them out...then to shuffle them. But I could tell he wanted to hold on to that card.

Chris won, again, and then it was down to David and me. And I couldn't believe it, but I didn't loose. I was not the Old Maid. I didn't want David to feel bad so I quickly teased him that he was an old lady. He laughed and said "Yeah, but at least you didn't loose! I turned your luck from (shows thumbs down) to (shows thumbs up)." I thanked him and gave him a big hug.

Maybe I was always the Old Maid because I didn't want anyone else to feel sad about loosing or being the Old Maid. I chose it out of their hands so I could see the relief in their eyes when they knew they were saved from being the Old Maid. And now David did it for me, just so I wouldn't be the looser, and would perhaps get my luck turned around.

This is Baby M

This is about as good as it gets with a 4month old. Hours of this mixed with feeding and crying. (And in my case, one dog insisting on a never ending belly rub and another dog plotting my demise.)

Belly Rub

Demise

Too Sleepy to Function

I was really tired this weekend. And things were worse this morning as I headed off to work. I was tired to the point of stupidity. I'm sure the Benadryl, or rather Waldryl, I took to put a stop to my constantly running nose and unstoppable sneezing didn't help perk matters up. When the baby and I arrived at his morning toddler class, I walked up to the door of the center and took my keys out of my pocket. Yeah, did you get that? I'm supposed to ring the buzzer to get in. I don't have keys.

There was a woman right behind me who saw the whole thing. She just laughed. Anyone who has or works with children automatically excuses this type of behavior. If it wasn't a cold, it could just as easily have been caused by "baby brain." (A condition that occurs from spending too much time with little ones, ultimately resulting in your brain turning to mush which significantly reduces your ability to maintain an adult conversation, remember why you are where you are, what you were just about to do, and other such things.

I used to be able to write messages with numbers on a beeper.

How uncool am I now? I just had to look to Google to interpret a text from a mother of three.

Spring is in the Air

Spring is in the air.
The snow is melting.
There was a spider in my bathroom.
I did not need a scarf today.
I followed a rat down the sidewalk on the way home from pilates.
Can't wait for this guy to come back.....


Had lots of these last year. They crawl on the walls and ceiling too. Eww.

Mokey Pood on My Bed

So last night we were all having our after work play time. I was catching up on missed tv shows on the computer and the girls were wrestling on my bed. All of a sudden I heard a squeak. Not the dooking squeak but the "ouch" squeak. I gave my usual response of yelling, "Girls!" That's usually sufficient enough to break up the wrestling into a run and chase.

But this time I heard nothing. No more squeaks, no running, nobody jumping down from the bed. Just like if you have children, you know a sudden silence means something sinister is going on. So I pause Modern Family, and go into my room.

I immediately see two ferrets and a pile of poo on my quilt. Fawn is in her usual nonchalant stance. She looks at me as I enter then saunters toward the poop, sniffs it, and returns a look to me. I'm pretty sure if I were in fact dealing with kids, Fawn would be the tattle tail. She always seems to be around mayhem with this look of "Look Mom, look what she did. I didn't do it, but she did."

Poor Mokey is sadly in her usual stance - when she has done something wrong, or more broadly, when she is terrified. Mokey is frozen like a deer in headlights. This stance tells me she did it (I figured anyway) and that she knows its a bad thing. I don't know what Mokey experienced before she came here, but I know it was bad. Sometimes I wonder to what extreme due to her behavior and the fact that her fears are still so strong after a whole abuse free year here at Disney a la Ferret.

Anyway, she's in complete statue mode. I check to see how bad by using one finger to touch the top of her head. She doesn't move, doesn't flinch, its as if this action isn't taking place. I move the nosy Fawn onto the floor and say to Mokey a few words in my deep serious voice. Yes, I still disciplined her. I liked that she looked at me and listened while I told her no pooping on mommy's bed. She wasn't afraid of me while I disciplined her. This shows how far we've come!

In the past she would have hid under the couch for hours and I would have had to pretend to be asleep in the other room before she'd ever show herself again. Then I'd have to catch her and she'd bit me -those good horribly painful break-the-skin bites. Anyway, after a few words I put her on the floor and began cleaning up my comforter. The ferrets hovered around on the floor. After all was cleaned up, Mokey came right up to my feet for attention. Now we're getting to some normalcy. You can do bad things, I will discipline you, and then it goes back to everybody loves each other. And most importantly, nobody gets hurt here. I tell Mokey that all the time.

She still has a few episodes now and then. Just this past month it happened two times, that I moved while she was playing which caught her off guard and she was scrambling under the couch and refusing to come out.

Baby steps....Baby steps

Snowstorm 2011

Otherwise known as "a storm of epic proportions" and a "thundersnow."

My street

This storm brought with it the usual school closings, power outages, and loss of cable and internet. Some of the more interesting characteristics is that we have -so far- reached number 3 on the Chicago's Biggest Snowstorm list with 20inches. We still have about 1 hour of heavy snowfall left.

Snow drifts cover the Church steps

The best part has been that I've experienced my first thundersnow! It was amazing. At first I thought it was the L or a truck rumbling, but it was a thundersnow! About an hour later lightening was added.

Lakeshore drive suddenly became overwhelmed with snow, and two accidents which brought full traffic to a complete standstill. It took up to 7 hours for security to evacuate everyone out of the cars on mopeds. The footage looks like that -was it a Steven King movie - where most everyone died and a few people were walking around and all the cars were just sitting there in the streets. This happened at about 4:30. It started snowing at 2:00. That's how fast the snow came down. Everyone started scrambling home once it hit. I was walking home at 3:00 being pelted in the eyes by 50mile an hour snow pellets and occasionally being blown off course. Take a look at this car outside my apartment.


Last night I heard the sound of a stuck car trying to move through the snow. I had to get up and peek. I figured someone was trying to pull out of a parking spot that had been plowed in. Nope, this idiot was just trying to drive down my unplowed side street. He was stuck, rocking back and forth, in the middle of the road. (Not the car in the photo, that's parked.)

Another fun snow fact is that the snow drifts have actually reached up to 7feet! I ventured outside a little bit ago. I had to see it, and preferably before later tonight when it may reach as low as 30below with the windchill. Now we are comfortably in the teens. Although there was still pelting going on and I'm no fan of being pelted in the face whether its snow, rain, or dirt kicked up by the wind, so it was a short venture. I started by venturing out the back door.


My two bottom steps were covered. When I stepped off onto the sidewalk, I sunk all the way down to my thigh! My knee high boots fell a little short of the job.

You can't even see my boot down there.

I hiked through my building ally out to the street ally.

This is the street ally. You can see that the snow comes halfway up some garages.


I walked up against the apartment buildings on the side of another huge drift, just short of my waist to the main road that had been plowed. I snapped some shots, took some videos, and reached my limit for adventure and headed back. I went in the front door this time, choosing to pass on wading through another snow drift.

This is what was once my sidewalk.

Some people have been seen out on skis, gliding down the plowed streets. About 60,000 people are without power, and many without cable or internet (like my brother and sister-in-law who are working from Starbucks.). Luckily I am sitting in my well heated apartment, lights on, television informing, and typing away on my blog, and enjoying the day off :)

Oh, yeah, visibility. At one point this morning, visibility at Midway airport was .o6 miles or one sixteenth of a mile. That's what we call a white-out!

Another interesting snow issue we've encountered is that there is too much snow to plow out of the way, aside from it just blowing back onto the roads and still falling, they may have to bring in melters to melt it down to make more room. Who knew they had melters for situations like this?

Reports coming in from the western suburbs say that the sky has cleared to a point where the sun can be seen. Repeat, the sun has been spotted in the suburbs. This storm has an end. It appears we will hold the #3 spot for Chicago's Biggest Snowstorms.

Ahh, the memories