While putting the lid back on a Tabasco bottle:

Cassidy: Is Tabasco a drug?
Me: Uhhhh, no.
Cassidy: But on the back of my book it said ‘Tabasco, alcohol and…’
Me and Ben: *laughing hysterically*
Cassidy: What?!
Me: TOBACCO. Tobacco is what’s in cigarettes. Tabasco is made with pepper, vinegar and salt and makes your eggs taste better.
Cassidy: Ohhhhhh…

When dropping off clothes at her friends so she could spend the night:

Me: Call me in the morning.
Cassidy: I’ll call you when I’m ready to leave.
Me: No. Call me in the morning.
Cassidy: Can I call you when I’m ready to leave?
Me: We can discuss it when you CALL ME IN THE MORNING.
Cassidy: OKAY!

The kid keeps me on my toes for sure. She’s growing into such a cute little bundle of RIDICULOUS ATTITUDE. But some of the things she does, like that conversation at her friend’s house, still make me giggle like I’m nine years old all over again. Of course, I don’t let her see me giggle. That would be admitting defeat and she can’t see that. She has to see me being the cold hearted, uncaring, ruthless MOTHER.

Plus, I make up for the attitude by embarrassing the piss out of her in public. Having no shame is finally beginning to pay off!

When I was 14 I demanded a pager from my mother. I told her if I didn’t get one I’d run away to my boyfriend’s house. AGAIN. I’d done this once before and it was a disaster that ended with me being Grounded For Life after the police had to come get me. But that’s a story for a different day…

The pager. Yes. Every cool kid had a pager and how was I supposed to know that a party location had changed or been busted last minute without this trusty devise to keep me connected!? My very EXISTENCE ON THE PLANET EARTH rode on whether or not I had that clear devise sticking out of my tight Calvin Klein jeans (clip out thank you very much, I totally wasn’t a belt loop clipper. Eww.) and I was not at all ashamed to remind my mother incessantly by yelling, slamming my door and telling her I hated her.

FINALLY I got one.

Mom: This pager is for ME to get ahold of you. I don’t care who you give the number to, who pages you, how many times a day it goes off. If I page you, you better call me back in 5 minutes OR BE DEAD.
Me: What?! The field party I’m going to tonight is AT LEAST 20 minutes from a phone. And first I have to find somebody sober enough to drive me there and hope we don’t get lost in the desert on the way.
Mom: *blink*
Me: I’m kidding. Kind of. 10 minutes?
Mom: There is nowhere in this city, county OR STATE that is more than 5 minutes from a phone. And if there is, YOU DON’T NEED TO BE THERE.
Me: But…
Mom: *glare that was so hot it melted icebergs on other continents*
Me: Five minutes. Got it.

I can’t tell you the number of times that Stephanie and I snuck out and I’d get The Page a 2AM and I’d completely ignore it and sneak back in the house around 4ish and hope that she’d taken enough Klonopin to forget she had ever paged me. It really is a miracle that my mother even TALKS to me today. Let alone, be one of my best friends who I confide so much in. Because if I were her, I’d totally hate my guts.

We bought Cassidy a cell phone today. She’ll be 9 in 3 months and is not the first kid in her class to get one. Or even the second or third of fourth. She was “so happy I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight”. We have a list of rules a mile long and she’s perfectly happy to just HAVE the phone.

Me: So we understand? The phone is to call Ben, myself and in an emergency, Nana. If you want to call anybody else, you MUST ask for permission first.
Cassidy: I know. But I can still hold it and play with it and look at it though. IT’S SO COOL, MOM!!!

Every once in awhile I call my mom out of the blue and apologize.

“I’m so sorry about that time that the police brought us home and Stephanie was arrested and I had to wake you up in the middle of the night so the cops could explain to you that we were pulled over in the WORST PART OF TOWN. I think I understand how you felt now.”

“I’m SO SORRY about that time I lied to you about the smell in the house when you came home that Sunday. I didn’t realize that 300 drunk people in the house could SMELL SO BAD and I scrubbed for 24 straight hours and the smell, it just WOULDN’T LEAVE.”

Tommorrow it will be:

“You know all those times I didn’t call you and you sat up and wondered where I was and if I was alive and when you’d ask me about it I’d just yell at you and slam the door in your face? I’M SO SORRY!! Let me buy you lunch and we’ll go shopping for shoes we don’t need and I can grovel all day and tell you over and over again how wonderful you are.”

*Bonus points to those of you old enough to understand the title.

1) I have some more pownce invites if anybody wants one. Just comment with a valid email address (won’t be shown) or email me one.

2) Cassidy didn’t have pink eye. If her biological sperm donor had ACTUALLY taken her to a doctor like he told me he had (he didn’t), he’d have know that it was, in fact, viral conjunctivitis and the medicine he gave her (which his doctor gave to him to treat his eye God only knows how long ago for a scratch he got when he got SAND in his eye) didn’t help, it just masked the symptoms and now it’s not only in her EYES, but also spread to her EARS.

I was so pissed off about it when we left the doctor yesterday I had trouble focusing enough to just drive home. Then on my way into work I realized that, why am I so surprised by this? I should have assumed he was clueless and taken her to the doctor Sunday when he dropped her off. Especially given his track record and the time he had me freaked out because he said she had a yeast infection and how could I let her walk around like that scratching and WHAT WAS GOING ON IN MY HOUSE that caused her to get it?! So as soon as we picked her up we drove her to the doctor and:

Doctor: Hello. Here’s your Overbearing Freaked Out Parent Awardâ„¢. She has a bug bite by her vagina, fools. Next time LOOK down there before you come in.
Me: Her father told us it was a yeast infection, I put her in the car and drove her here. I didn’t have time to look.
Doctor: He was wrong. It’s a bug bite. Sorry you just wasted 1.5 hours in a room full of sick people for nothing.
Me: Can I please get that in writing so I can mail it to him with a pipe bomb?
Doctor: SURE!

Lesson learned: Assume nothing. Expect to have to clear things up on my own. Every time.

I’m not that bent anymore. In the end, it’s treatable, it only cost me $24 to diagnose and treat, and she’s home with me and far, far away from him and since he probably won’t bother to call her till sometime around Thanksgiving, meh.

3) Her arms are “very, very, very, very, very, very” sore. We are trying out gymnastics classes at different gyms and yesterday was her first ‘tryout’ and not only did she do about 30 hand stands, she climbed about half way up a 20 foot tall rope. This morning:

Cassidy: Mommy?
Me: Yes?
Cassidy: When I move my arms up and down, they hurt.
Me: You are sore from gymnastics yesterday.
Cassidy: It sucks.
Me: Yep, but the next time you go the pain will be less and then less the time after that and it will just get better. And! You’ll be able to flex and have UberMuscles so don’t get discouraged okay?
Cassidy: I’m still going! It hurts but I still REALLY want to do gymnastics.

The class yesterday was more “fun” than structure, which is what Ben and I want for her. Something that focuses on discipline, form and is pretty structured. So! I need to call a few more places and hopefully we’ll find a winner soon.

4) This turned out to be a little longer than I had planned and I should really get back to doing actual work.

YAY!

Only, not really.

Saturday Ben asked if I wanted to go look at some new stereo stuffs for my car. My M3 still has the stock head unit in it but I took the six disc changer out awhile ago because it wasn’t working for some reason which, whatever, I used the Ipod with tape adapter all the time anyway.

He warned me in advance, ‘We are just looking today. Pricing. Okay?’ as if I’m some impatient impulse buyer that doesn’t have any control. And I am. That is me in the relationship.

Ben: Do you really need more makeup?
Me: But I didn’t have this color!
Ben: Purple?
Me: It’s not PURPLE, it’s TRAX. That is other one is Violet. Plus it’s pigment, not eyeshadow.
Ben: You wear it on your eye.
Me: I JUST NEED IT, I HAVE TO BUY IT, IT’S A NEW COLOR AND SO PRETTY AND I JUST HAVE TO.

Or something.

Anyway, Ben drove my car a few weeks ago and when he put the tape in it made a sound like 500 gears being forced in the wrong direction. And that’s all it’s done since then. It. Has. Been. Rough. Mornings aren’t so bad because I listen to NPR and traffic updates but the afternoons, or anytime Cassidy is in the car, it kills me. Do you know how many times you have to search the entire FM band to find ONE good song? Well, in a three hour drive from here to Bakersfield, I managed to find ONE song. Seriously. One. Not that I even listen to good songs all the time. I mean, I have an 8 year old girl and there’s a lot of Fergie and Gewn Stefani goin’ on. Which I guess isn’t THAT bad. It could be worse. Like the Hanna Montana crap she’s suddenly OMG SO IN LOVE WITH BECAUSE SHE’S SO KEWL!

Ben: I’m thinking a nice head unit, an amp and some front speakers and you’ll be set.
Me: Whatever. As long as I can listen to my Ipod, I’m fine.

We ended up getting an Alpine iDA-X001 head unit built in collaboration with Apple for use with the Ipod. It even shows album art. TeeHee. Small pleasures. We also got some bad ass six inch Alumapro speakers for the front which will require some modification of the kick panel but these speakers almost caused me to have a spontaneous orgasm right there in the sound booth so I’M OKAY WITH THAT. Then Ben made the mistake of asking to listen to them WITH an Alumapro subwoofer and ‘almost’ turned into ‘real’ and we got it too and two Alpine amps to power them all. And they are really cute amps. That was one of them. I’m not sure which speakers that powers. I didn’t even know there were TWO until Ben just told me after laughing at me for not knowing. And blue cabling for all of it. And a capacitor, also Alumapro.

I drop the car off Friday night and can hopefully pick it up Saturday evening. *giddy*

The other big news?! Cassidy is home. Love. I was REALLY missing her the last week or so. That’s partly the reason I hadn’t blogged most of last week. All the posts turned into whiny sob stories of WHAAAA I miss my little 8 year old mouthy BFF/daughter/MiniMe! That lasted a whole 24 hours. Because she came home with pink eye (which they took her to the doctor and ‘treated’ her for so how the fuck does that happen?) and an over sized, incredibly skanky, Bratz Doll she named Cynthia. Cassidy even called her a Hoochie Momma. Thanks for teacheing her that term and letting her think it’s okay to use it in public conversation, ass fuckers.

Anyway, it’s good to have my sidekick home. And I better get to bed because I need to get up, get her to the doctor, then to work before 11:30 when we have a going away lunch for a co-worker.

Night, All!

Because I’m a responsible blogger and Surge is a DREAM KILLER, I thought that I should add that I’m doing my part to kill the planet, one cold, refreshing fix at a time. According to TreeHugger.com *tries not to snicker*, every 1 kilogram of Fiji water consumes 26.88 kilograms of water (7.1 gallons) .849 Kilograms of fossil fuel (one litre or .26 gal) and emitted 562 grams of Greenhouse Gases (1.2 pounds) to produce. Now my habit feels even more dirty than before. Only not as bad as say, if I smoked…

Some time ago I rather harshly judged somebody because they wouldn’t drink any water but Figi. I still think its pretty lame to go overboard with it which is what this person did.

Them: Oh no, I don’t want that perfectly good Arrowhead water you are offering be because I’m thirsty and there’s nothing around to drink, because I ONLY drink Fiji water.
Me: Good! Becuase I’d much rather spit on your hot, dry corpse then GIVE you a single drop of my water!

For the last few weeks I’ve been living a secret double life. I’ve gone through probably 20 bottles of Fiji water. I CAN’T HELP IT! IT’S A PROBLEM, I KNOW I NEED HELP! I’M SO ASHAMED!!!

But it’s so soft and flavorless and when its ice cold it’s like pouring liquid extacy (Not that I’ve ever done E, because I HAVEN’T. HI DAD!) down your throat. The way the supersoft water rolls across your tongue and down your throat with no aftertaste and… *starts shaking*

*grabs bottle, injects into vein*

Okay, I have a problem. BUT! I can say, that if I was thirsty and somebody offered me a bottle of Arrowhead, I’d not turn it down like some pigish, asswipe who’s SO MUCH BETTER than your crap infested, NAME BRAND water.

The other day Ben, who admits the Supreme Fabulousness of the water and has been knows to bring bottles to bed with him, was giving me a hard time about it. “what makes it so special?”, he asked. So I explained:

Me: It’s filtered through mountains and silica so that’s why it’s so soft. Mountians that are untouched by pollutants from factories or humans and think about it, even the rain clouds have no pollution in them and so the water even STARTS OUT pure and…
Ben: What about dead animals?
Me: What?!
Ben: Well, there has to be dead animals on the mountain…
Me: I hate you! Why would you say that!?

Ben always has to ruin EVERYTHING for me!! But! According to my Fiji bottle yesterday the water is protected by an Impermeable Rock that protects the water. IMPERMEABLE! Click that link. They explain that the water isn’t ever even touched by AIR, let alone ROTTING ANIMAL.

By definition, artesian water comes from a source deep within the earth, protected by layers of clay and rock. There is no opening, not even a porthole to the surface. As a result, the water never comes into contact with the air, protecting it from environmental pollutants and other contamination.

IMPERMEABLE! I think that rotting animal corpses would fall under the “other contamination” umbrella. Not that it really matters anyway. I’m stupid brave enough to drink California tap water so drinking water filtered through rotting animal corpses would probably be a step up.