From the X-files: close encounter with the tooth fairy

My darling daughter lost her third tooth two nights ago.  Because it fell out at 4 am, we figured the tooth fairy had already been past our house and wouldn't be back until the next night.  She carefully set it up on her bedside table in a cupcake liner, ready for pick-up.

Fast forward to bedtime last night.  I was feeling crabby, the kids were being extra pokey, and I shook out DD's comforter very briskly while getting her bed set up.  I turned to fill her drinking cup with water and remembered.  Oh, crap.  In my bedmaking frenzy I had whipped the cupcake liner off the table and onto the floor.  We searched and searched, but we couldn't find the tooth.  DD was surprisingly calm and resigned.  "Maybe she'll give me a dollar anyway.  Or maybe just a quarter."  I assured her that the tooth fairy would understand but because she still seemed a little worried, I offered to write a note:

Dear Tooth Fairy,
DD lost a tooth last night!  She had it all set up for you, but I accidentally knocked over the cup it was in and lost it.  Sorry!  Can you please leave her money anyway?  I promise she did lose one.
Thanks,
Her Mom

She approved of this so much she added a letter of her own, placed on top of mine:

AND WHAT DO YOU DO WITH MY TOOTH
LOVE, [name redacted to preserve intrigue]
OH AND MY MOM MAD A LETAR TOO

Aww.  She also showed me that she had left a notebook and pen beside the notes, ready for the tooth fairy's answer.  Hmm.  My saving grace was that she decided to sleep in my room last night, so I was able to go into her room and really think about the note without risking detection.

I thought about it for a while.  Should I write a note in my own handwriting, figuring she would be too young to notice?  I don't know.  She's pretty sharp.  Should I type something up on the computer using a swirly font?  She's always printing stuff off, so that seemed risky.  I decided the only thing for it was to write the note with my right (non-dominant) hand.  That meant it had to be short!  I also waited until right before I went to sleep, so my brain was a little fuzzy.  Here's what I came up with:

Sweet girl!
Sorry to hear your tooth was lost!  It's okay.  I use the teeth I do take and use them to make fairy scissors.  Hugs!  - T. F.

[Editor's note:  our tooth fairy rep doesn't take the tooth; she leaves it.  Hence the qualifying "the teeth I do take."]

Yep, you read right.  Fairy scissors.  What??  As soon as I wrote that I regretted it.  But for darn sure I wasn't going to write another note with my wrong hand.  So I sat for a moment, then thought, well, she's imaginative.  Who knows what she'll think of it?

And this turns out to be the best part.  In the morning, she reads the note and says, "Wow, the tooth fairy writes like a little kid."  (Thanks, honey, you try writing with the wrong hand sometime.)
So I say, "Well, she was probably hovering while she wrote, that would make it hard to write clearly."
She thinks for a minute, then decides, "No, I think it's because she's so small she had a hard time handling the pen."

Wow.  And the fairy scissors?  Didn't bat an eyelash.  She seemed to know ALL about it.  She described how you would use a molar with its roots:  the roots could be bent together to make scissor handles and you would carve out the tooth to make blades.  But she wasn't entirely sure how you would use regular kid teeth without those huge roots on them.  She figures exact details are unimportant when there's magic involved.

There sure is magic, kid, but you're the one making it.  I'll say it again, until you want to barf:  I love my kids; they are truly awesome critters.

Rage in this machine

I felt so angry this morning that I could barely sit still.  Imagine screaming full-blast without taking a breath for five whole minutes.  Stop and really imagine it, five minutes with no lessening of intensity or volume.  Were I to do that, it wouldn't capture the depth of this feeling.  That's what happens, I guess, when you spend 36 years of your life not allowing yourself to feel the way you really feel.

Oh, I'm spoiling for a target this morning, some legitimate target that I can unload on, but I don't think I'm likely to find one.  The sticking point is "legitimate."  Many targets abound, from minor annoyances to systemic frustrations to really, really difficult people.  But I feel thermonuclear, and unless I run across a kid-diddling, kitten-stomping terrorist ripe for a beat-down, I think I'll have to find another outlet.  I have to find some way to dissipate this feeling.  I really, really do.  I am just about out of storage space.

Insomnia sucks

I know I should go to bed
But I'm laying here on the couch instead
And I know, with some sorrow,

This late hour means much soda tomorrow.

Remember:  I'm not sleeping at my desk, I'm just thinking really hard.  That puddle of liquid isn't drool, it's the perspiration from my brow as I think deep thoughts.  Not snoring; just saying "eureka!" reeeeaaaaallllyyy slowly....

Doggity dog dogersons

We are going to get a dog!  It's amazing how much thought and angst and pointed waiting went into the decision to get a pooch.  Now we have to actually get one.  I believe strongly in mutts and shelter dogs, and we (our family, but also society in general) are lucky to have a lot of rescue groups in the area with dogs needing homes.

I know that there are a lot of jerks out there, who view dogs as mere property or something akin to a disposable toy.  To me, it's pretty close to adopting a child -- this is it, for life.  The good news is that rescue groups take their responsibilities seriously.  The bad news is that they take their responsibilities seriously.  I feel like I am trying to buy a gun or something.  There's the application, the references, the home visit, the trial period.  I really, truly am very glad the dogs in their care have landed with people who take their welfare so seriously.


But they need to have a fast-track approval process for, well, me.  Doesn't everyone in the world know by now that I know what I'm doing?  Give me the dog, already.

Woof.

Rain

I love spring rain.  I'm sitting here knowing I should go to bed and sleep, but I want to hear the rain start falling.  I love that sound.  I really wish we had a tin roof sometimes, like the one on the farm.  I have great sense memories of that sound, associated with looking across the farmyard at the line of locust trees just on the other side of the pasture fence while a curtain of rain cascades over the porch roof.  Or the time a friend and I went out into the street and danced in the rain, got soaking wet, and loved every minute of it.

Keeps on rainin', look how it's rainin'...

Oh! So that's what they meant...

I was a bit puzzled by this item in my employer's wellness newsletter, then intrigued, then inspired, then disappointed.  I was coming up with all kinds of unattractive things to do that week!


Turn Off Week is April 19th – 25th

…which also explains how they can get away with this one:

April is Alcohol Awareness Month

If Turn Off Week was what I thought it was, this would maybe be bad timing…
(Disclaimer: I know how serious alcohol abuse can be; this is a joke, people.)

And my personal favorite:

April is Stress Awareness month

Show of hands, folks! Who considers themselves to be *unaware* of this issue in their current day-to-day life??

F@#king Toys

Sighing resignedly, I walked up to my husband.  "I just found a chick in your closet.  What do you have to say?"

"I was hoping you wouldn't notice." [snicker]

Tiny wind-up chick, you offend me, sir.  I wonder sometimes if I am the only parent out there who starts to feel like an angry troll when encountering kid toys in my room.  I don't mind as much when my stuff is appropriated/borrowed/outright stolen by my kids.  It is mildly annoying, but not really a big deal to me.  It's just stuff.

But don't be putting your stuff in my space.  It makes me NUTS.  I'm tripping over toy phones, tractors, books, art supplies, you name it.  One thing I care deeply about is my personal space.  When no one is looking, I literally throw the toys out into the hall, into their rooms.  I'm not talking about a gentle toss; I'm looking to impress the major league scouts.  The eight year old in me does a little troll stomp, then I move on.

I know, I know, some day I'll miss this, this and all the myriad messes and dramas that come with small kids, but right now?  You know in The Usual Suspects, toward the end of the movie, when Kevin Spacey turns back and says in a broken pitiful voice "F@#king cops"?

F@#king toys.

They grow up so fast...

Overheard from the other room, as DD watches some Marvel comics animated short online:

"Oh, for goodness' sakes!  Just push him in already."

Carbonated goodness: evil threat or vital weapon?

It has occurred to me that there is a scrawny, angry bitch trapped inside me, and the way I have chosen to keep her muted is to surround her with a layer of doughy soft flab.  Am I protecting myself or others around me, by doing this?  Neither?  Perhaps she would be less crabby if I let her talk.