We took a little road trip up past Payson today.  We planned in advance to eat at a little diner in a town called Happy Jack, AZ.  The food was outstanding but Emma wasn't thrilled about the ambiance of the place.  She informed me that she didn't like how all the dead animal heads on the walls were staring at her while she was trying to eat.  (She completely lost her shit when she saw an elk body dangling out of the back of some hunter dude's truck, too.)  Some people are just so picky.

None of us were prepared for the amount of snow we would find (it's March! in Arizona!) and Chad was especially not prepared to have his ass handed to him by Miss Thang in a snowball fight. (She plotted chucking a snowball at him the entire way up - quite loudly actually - so I don't know how he wasn't ready for a smackdown.) He is still complaining of tingling in his nearly frostbitten fingers because we, being the most intelligent of native Valley of the Sun.....ites.....brought NO cold weather gear.



 

As we decided to make a detour on the way home to visit our favorite camping spot we saw posters for a lost dog taped onto every little mile marker in the middle of the forest.  It's very sad that someone lost their doggie in the middle of the woods.  It was a small dog and there are bears and bobcats in that area so we can all guess what fate the poor guy met.  We *are* so sensitive to the plight of the random lost dog that somehow the conversation devolved from Emma trying to guess what kind of dog it was to the parents making up the most idiotic dog breed names imaginable. 

Chad won with "Labradonkey".

Emma was not amused with the turn of conversation.

Actually now that I think about it I can't believe I'm telling this story because it really does make us look like a bunch of heartless buffoons.

So to distract you from our evillll here's a new picture of Joey the Lovebird!

Awwwww.

Have you forgotten yet?

It's Valentine's Day.  Either you completely loathe this day or you absolutely adore it, depending on a number of factors: your level of love for all things chocolate, your current relationship status, or your stock holdings in Hallmark.  I personally appreciate any holiday that centers around candy.  At any rate, this year on Valentine's Day I have learned a few things:

1.  My child is a genius.  Ok, perhaps we already knew that.  BUT.  We purchased Rock Band 3 today (we are fond of bonding by making complete idiots of ourselves as a family) and a Mana song was chosen for us by the game.  I'm on the keyboard, Military Man is spazzing out on the guitar (expert!) and I'm playing the keyboard.  I wasn't even aware of what song we were playing, since I couldn't hear anything over the sound of my husband's seizures/guitar smashing and my own AWESOME, but suddenly I realized that Emma was singing in some language other than English.  And as far as I know she isn't bilingual.  I asked her, with disbelief in my voice, if she was singing in Spanish, and she waited for a pause in her verse to blurt "apparently so!" before continuing to speak in tongues.  I laughed so hard that tears were forming in my eyes but I STILL MANAGED 97% ACCURACY ON THE SONG.  You may worship me now. 

2.  My husband is also a genius, especially when it comes to ordering flowers.  Last year when he was in Iraq he ordered me roses for February 14th, and I forgave him when they came in a box and I had to assemble them because he was so proud of how much money he saved. When they lost that "just came out of a box" look they were actually quite beautiful!  I was even amused and took photographic evidence of the assembling process to post about it here.  (And I never posted it.  Oops.  Well I was a little distracted, considering that my HUSBAND WAS IN A WAR ZONE so you'll please forgive me.)  This year, can you guess how my flowers arrived?  IN A BOX PEOPLE.  And I assembled them myself.  My husband is so romantic. 

3.  Valentines' Day lunch will never again consist of fried pickles, spicy garlic boneless wings and a drink containing Jack Daniels.  Let's just say that my eyes and throat burned even more the second time I made my lunch's acquaintance.

In all seriousness, today is the anniversary of a little friend who left my life on this day last year.  She and her family have been in my thoughts all day, just as I celebrate my own special relationship with my daughter and husband.  I almost feel a bit guilty being able to enjoy sneaking into my ten year-old's room to tape paper hearts all over the door while she's asleep and to share a box of See's candy with the man I most love.  There were plenty of posts on Facebook today among my friends and family vowing their hatred for this day, and maybe it's easy for me to say this because I have a great marriage and the world's best (and bilingual!) daughter, but part of me just wanted reach through the computer and say HEY! Today isn't just about whether you have a SPOUSE or a BOYFRIEND to love. Remember all those other people who love you: your mom or your dad or even your crazy Aunt Gertrude.  I witness a great struggle between life and death every time I head off to work and sometimes as I'm driving home after twelve hours of it it just hits me how LUCKY I am to have the people in my life that I do.  I am surely not the first nurse to feel this way, but it's just so UNFAIR that someone like me - surly, dysfunctional me, the woman who can't make up her mind about whether she believes in a god that lets much-wanted babies die and drug moms constantly reproduce, a grumpster always ready to pick a fight with those DAMN ARMY WIVES - is able to hold my little girl today and others - people who deserve to hear their kids sing in Spanish on Valentine's Day - are today putting flowers on the graves of their own children.

And now that you're totally depressed by my blog: HAVE A HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY DAMMIT.  Because you're most likely one of the lucky ones like me.

Repent sinners!

Hello from Arizona.  The land of sunshine, greenery, people who drive like idiots.....and SNOW?  That's right, it snowed here last week and you'd think that the world was ending, according to all the news reports.  Add that to birds randomly dropping dead out of the sky and my child requesting to try vegetables at dinner the other night and the May 2012 doomsdayers just might have something going on there.  Bailey the sulcata is not enjoying his new digs inside the house where it's small and he can't dig holes but HEY LEARN TO HIBERNATE and I won't have to squirrel you away for the next few months, dude.

Christmas? WONDERFUL.  It's cliche!  It's annoying!  But I beamed the entire two weeks just because my soldier was safely home this year and truly?  (Gird your loins here.) You don't realize what a great thing you have until it's playing in the sand in a faraway war zone for a year.  (*Gag*  *Vomit* I know, I even want to punch MYSELF in the gut for being so sappy.)  My family tried really hard last year to make the holidays easy on Emma and me and they did a phenomenal job, but nothing can replace my belching, farting, inappropriate-at-the-worst-of-times best friend.  It's just not Christmas without a ridiculous twelve-different-kinds-of-wrapping-on-one-present gift from Mr. Grinch.  I think I even spied him enjoying himself this year, even though he swears he hates the holiday.  The man had never really played with Legos before and when  Miss Thang got the Lego Harry Potter castle for Christmas from Sperm Donor (he hasn't seen her in five months and I threatened him with court action if he didn't call his crying daughter so I guess he's going to try to make up for his neglect now) Chad and Emma spent a few happy hours at the table gobbling chocolate and putting it together.  Chad then announced that he LOVES Legos and what has he been missing all this time?!  Another expensive hobby, yay.

New Year's was low key.  Had a friend's daughter over that night and made friends with the new neighbors by blowing up fireworks (there was one in there called a "Golden Shower" -disturbing) in the middle of the street at one in the morning.  Nice to meet you three-doors-down president of the HOA.  Meet your new neighbors: the Obnoxious family!

Our new house is still awesome.  We have a whole lot of room and I have more furniture wants than I have money.  The TV situation is just plain SAD.  The last house had a stupid built-in entertainment center so we sold our 60-inch TV, got a tiny flat screen and put my favorite furniture piece in storage for the year that we were there but now that we can use it again the TV is a wee bit *small* for the space.  Pathetic.  We need binoculars just to see it.  But not to worry!  The man of the house is most assuredly up to the task of shopping for overpriced electronics.  We should have a giant-ass TV to fit that space by the end of  the month.

So now I'm trying to run off the five pounds I've put on over the holidays.  (It's a tradition at this point.)  And we're gearing up for a full year of enjoying each other. 

Happy New Year from the Dixon zoo!

Had to crop this one

DSC03761, originally uploaded by Corn Child.

And somehow flickr wants it on a separate post.

So here it is.

Suck it, flickr.

Moving is quickly becoming an annual thing around here

News on the Emma front:

Horsey Girl had her first band concert.  It was spectacular, with geese honking sound effects and lots of little feet swinging in time to the music under chairs that were just too big for one particular fifty-two pound ten year-old.  I was such the proud mama!

The next night I was sitting at my computer desk tooling around on the internet when Emma came giggling into my room.  She ducked below the edge of my desk, told me not to look and then sprang into the air next to me.  "Look Mom, I'm a NUN!"

Apparently a nun obsession is hereditary.  (Flute playing makes for very chapped lips!)


She's the tiny girl in the red headband RIGHT behind the microphone.  Pardon the extreme close-up of Random Woman's cheek and Male Pattern Baldness' scalp.  We can all hope that someday I will become less of a loser and get a real camera with a zoom lens.

We have begun the move to our new house.  Emma is handling this move MUCH better than the last one, probably due to the absence of a dad preparing to leave the country and also the fact that our new house is full of AWESOME!  (Cherry cabinets, granite counter tops, travertine floors, pool with waterfall!  Hell yeah!)  We got our keys yesterday and spent the whole day doing....well, I'm not even sure what we accomplished.  I cleaned the bathrooms and kitchen (thanks Mom!) and Chad moved a bunch of assorted junk over from the garage but truthfully by the time the sun went down it pretty much looked the same as it did at the beginning of the day.  We've got a bunch of army guys and some friends helping move the rest this weekend in exchange for the customary beer and pizza.

Winston, on the other hand, is NOT handling the move.  He's such the little weirdo anyway, but he's taken to randomly destroying newspapers, shredding packing boxes with his front paws when our backs are turned and basically throwing stompy temper tantrums in his old man way.  Destructive behavior among dogs is nothing new, I'm fully aware, but for the love of ganja the guy is almost fourteen so you'd think he'd mellow out about this whole thing.  Yesterday all the dogs got loose, owing to a forgotten open gate as we left for the new house, and when I returned I discovered two very familiar-looking dogs dumpster-diving a few streets over.  Winston, however, was nowhere to be found.  My mom and I searched and called for what seemed like an hour and finally located him in an older lady's garage three streets away in the OTHER direction from the rest of the pack, contentedly peering at her and the kids that came to check him out.  I picked him up and instead of any kind of happy dog reunion he kind of looked at me like WHATEVER WOMAN.  I know he's a stoic little boy but SHEESH a little gratitude would have been worth my tears over the thought of him alone in the cold. The little punk. 

I'm sure some more dog shivomit is in my future.

God Save the Queen

You ever have one of those mornings where you think you should have just stayed in bed?

Yeah, that's today.

Except add a truckload of poop, vomit and about ten tons of crushed rock.

I worked Thursday night. I stayed up all day Friday and didn't get any sleep *before* my shift.  So last night (Friday night) I slept for ten hours straight and got up this morning thinking, 'Hey, I feel great!  I got sleep!  Today's going to be such a good day!'

First mistake of the day?  Thinking positively.

Sadie was whining in her crate as I stepped out from under the covers. (The sound of Winston smacking his lips all night is keeping me up - Chad sleeps through the sound of Blackhawk helicopters - so we've banished him to his crate at night.  And because he won't sleep in his crate alone without YELPING all night - waking me up yet again - we've made Sadie be his crate room buddy.)  She's generally a whiny little turd anyway, so I thought nothing of it until I opened the "dog room" door and the smell of stool (to use a medical term) punched me in the nose.

Now before you jump to my poor wittle dog's defense, consider this: Sadie will sleep in MY room for up to twelve hours without stirring to pee, poop, or whine.  She does FINE for an extended period of time, as long as she's out of her crate.  As soon as she's in her crate, be it for one or forty hours, she's PUNISHING me (THAT'S RIGHT!  MORE CAPITAL LETTERS!) by instantly peeing on the towels we are constantly washing and throwing back in with her.  She usually reserves her poop for outside.  Well last night she decided that urine alone wasn't thoroughly getting her message across and chose to further desecrate her space with another type of ammunition.  Her evil plan backfired on her though, since I didn't know anything about it as I slept soundly with my white noise machine running full blast, and she decided to take out her anger at the poop in her crate by grinding it into the towels and pawing furiously at the latch on the crate, thus coating herself and everything within a five-foot radius in a pleasant layer of Taste of the Wild Dog Food version two.  Don't give me any of that "dogs aren't trying to punish you" dog whisperer crap.  Cesar Millan has never met my little minion of Satan.

Let the dogs outside.  Took Sadie's crate on the back porch.  Let the dogs back inside, locked Sadie in WINSTON'S crate since I didn't have time to bathe her immediately, put Winston and Missy in my bedroom and rushed off to Emma's horseback riding lesson. 

Came home and told Emma to let the dogs out of my room, but to please leave Sadie in her crate so I can give her a bath.

A shriek and a "MOMMMM!!!!" from the direction of my bedroom.

Winston, deciding that he would like me to murder HIM after I finish with Sadie, had licked up the poop from Sadie's crate this morning when he was on the back porch with The Crate.  Now there are approximately twenty piles of shivomit (that's SHIT+VOMIT, courtesy of my nurse co-worker Tricia) all over my carpeted bedroom floor.  Emma starts gagging at the sight of the steaming piles and then begins to cry when I yell "For GOD'S SAKE, do NOT start puking in here!!"  It appears that Winston also wants a repeat of the trip to the special Doggie Gastrointestinal Doctor from three years ago, where we spent two thousand dollars to retrieve a ROCK from his stomach.  (An expense that we could have avoided, according to Army Man, because a bullet only costs *five* cents. I was horrified to hear him utter that back then but today it is sounding like a very viable option.)  There are rocks interspersed with the shivomit.  Bits of the ten tons of crushed granite from our backyard.  I throw all dogs into the "dog room", where Missy, the genius of the group, repeatedly opens the door with her front paws because she wants to inspect my cleaning process. 

THREE dogs are going to die today.

So now I've got about twelve wet spots in my carpet, three dogs whining in their room because I'm not letting them out until I can guarantee myself that I won't be tempted to sell them on eBay, I can't get the smell of poop out of my nose, and my carpet cleaning machine is working overtime.

I really should have stayed in bed, but God BLESS the man who invented the Spot Bot.

Hola.

Has it really been two months since I've posted on this thing?

Well it's not like there's anything going on around here, anyway. 

Except that we're moving in a month.  And that Chad is back from Iraq.  Oh and that we went to Disneyland.  (Trick-or-treating at Disneyland = expensive but fun!)  I guess I could mention that Halloween has come and gone and that Chad is turning thirty-five this week.  (OLD!)  I'm also going back to work full-time.  We're planning on doing in vitro again in February.  Emma has started private flute lessons and is getting quite good and starting to enjoy herself at it.

So that's it.

Not a ton of things happening here AT ALL.

Surprisingly, I think Chad's being back at home has been harder on me than on him.  I expected him to have to adjust a little more  but he seems to have picked right up where he left off really well.  (He is currently blasting Guitar Hero in the family room.  Goodbye silent house!)  He was off of work for a month before he FINALLY went back last week.  (Love you darling!)  His constant need to plan out my day was making me a little bonkers.  He's been used to a life of routine for the last year, and I've been used to sending Emma off to school and sleeping all day, since I've stayed up every night for the last year worrying or working.  Gone are my days of laying around in my pajamas until two in the afternoon and dozing on the couch while trash TV plays in the background.  Attempting to be non-comatose during daylight hours all of a sudden has been a bit of a challenge for me, since all Chad wants to do while he's home is PLAY PLAY PLAY and SPEND SPEND SPEND.  He also felt the need to know exactly where I was at all times and what I was doing every second of the day but after he started following me to the bathroom we had a have a little talk about that.  He's used to playing Mr. In Charge with a bunch of underling soldiers who actually did have to report to him every time their bladders needed attention but I ever-so-gently reminded him that he needed to BACK OFF and that I could really handle THAT on my own, thank you.

Seriously, it is really nice to have him back home.  I kinda love the guy.

Emma has been on cloud nine, a different kid altogether since he's come home.  Her sense of humor has returned, and my worries about her sinking into depression at age ten have disappeared.  I knew that the deployment was hard on her, but now that I see the difference in her I truly understand just how difficult it was to have her daddy gone.  Which leads us to the next topic.  The taboo topic.  The topic I'm not supposed to bring up because it might make someone feel uncomfortable.  Or that someone reading this might know my ex. But WHATEVER, this is not a NICEY NICE BLOG.  It wouldn't be my blog if it were.  So here goes.  Her birth father hasn't called ONCE in the nearly two months that Chad has been home.  I'm at a loss about how to deal with this at all.  Do I call him and yell at him for abandoning yet ANOTHER one of his offspring?  (He has a twelve year-old "secret" son that nobody is supposed to know about, one that he never sees because it would ruin his facade of being the victim in our divorce.  Oops!  Spilled the beans!)  I've benignly asked Emma a few times whether she wanted to call her dad, and she's flat out told me NO, and the other day when I asked her again she responded that she didn't think he cared about her.  I did tell her that it isn't on her to be the responsible one or to make sure they have contact, but that her dad does care about her and sometimes he makes mistakes.  This, of course, is completely at odds with what my brain is doing, which is imagining punching the dude in sensitive areas for putting my baby through this.  HOW do I handle this?  At what point do I just give up on the guy?  I texted him once about an issue that Sonora Quest was having with his insurance carrier but he never texted me back. 

Maybe he's dead?

Anyway, so happy things!

Here are some photos of the last two months to catch you up: