Found this in Emma's backback

Yes, I know it's from nearly three months ago.  I'm really on top of things around here.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, my daughter, the next Shel Silverstein.

(Yerg!)

This entry brought to you by cupcakes

No, I'm not dead.  I've been really busy trying to train myself to run a 5K.  I'm doing so great!  I have new custom-fitted running shoes!  I can run for a full continuous five minutes without dying!  I'm up to 10 miles a week!  I am a running machine!!

Wait, what is that numb feeling shooting up my right leg?

Yeeeeeah.  My effing body decided to give me the big middle finger. My MRI shows a tendon tear in my foot.  I might need surgery and am waiting to hear from the specialist.  If I have to suffer through one more morning of daytime TV (those View ladies are RIDICULOUS) I'm going to brain someone so he'd better have a snappy solution for me.  Let this be a lesson to all of you:  EXERCISE WILL KILL YOU.  And if it doesn't kill you it will at least disable you.  So don't do it.  I'm switching to cupcake therapy.  I'll be fat and happy.  I'll just need bigger clothes.  I don't care. 

Sexay!

Here's a photograph album of everything else that's been going on around here:

Chewy the Haflinger turned twenty.  She had a party.  With cake.

Ask a genius child to dust and what happens?  She rigs herself a Mission Impossible dusting ensemble.

Ok, those of you with heart conditions might wanna skip these next photos. Jessica taught ME how to sew.  No really.  She did.  Because she's awesome.

Jess has the coolest scrap room on the planet.  And also makes the world's best cherry chip cupcakes.

 I want to marry her.

She CAN BE TAUGHT!  (This is right before we sewed ALL the patches together.)

Chad got his E7 promotion.  He brought me home the E8 patch for MY uniform because he says that I outrank him. 

So I used my newly acquired rank to start a project!  Look at him go!

 

Yes, I know I need to weed.

Expect me to be on here a lot more in the near future.  Because until I know whether I can get up off the couch I'll have NOTHING ELSE TO DO!

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.