Why I would have been drunk on brandy everyday by 3 pm

An Actual 1955 Good Housekeeping article.

On playing hooky

I received a telephone call yesterday afternoon from Rosemary's daycare saying that she had a fever of 102 degrees and I better get my butt in there to pick her up.
I promptly drive over to get her (teething, so a fever is normal) and bring her to my studio to give her some of that repulsive red sticky poison that she rejects immediately and which finds itself on whatever clean white clothing is within arm's reach. What's that called? Oh, Tylenol.
I was informed that she would not be able to return until she is fever-free for 24 hours; which would be Friday, most likely. So we decide to take the morning off on Thursday and do some random stuff together.

We load up a really nice walker that I had purchased at Target in May. She has clearly moved beyond it developmentally (who knew she'd be walking independently at 10 months anyway) and which she's used maybe four times - all of which prompted a total meltdown at being set into a device that she could neither chase the dog in nor bust up furniture with because our bungalow house is quite small and navigation is tricky for a toddler (and for an adult with a third glass of wine who's misplaced her eyeglasses, I hear).
Paid 40 bucks for it and just sold it to a child's resale shop for 7.

I dazily cruise around the store with my shopping cart while Rosemary is babbling about something incoherent (did she just say, 'iced tea'?) and scratching my head in disbelief that I was just paid less than $10 for a brand new piece of child equipment (damn you), I pick up this book and buy it (thus giving even more money to this stupid store that just ripped me off). I start to read the opening pages at the multitude of red lights on our way home (no apologies to the snot in the red Jeep who was behind me this morning at SR 26 and 52 and honking like an insane person, by the way).

If I get a minute of free time, I'd like to read it in it's entirety in the next couple of days as the secret of a happy child is something I just gotta know; because I've been foolishly acting like it was chocolate ice cream before dinner and, gosh, do I feel dumb.

She really does move this fast

Not just on the roof of your house

Last week I noticed a weird burning on my eye. I even commented that, "I think Rosemary scratched my eyelid, with battery acid". How she would have gotten into something like said acid is not quite known but didn't seem too out of the ordinary as she came to me the other day with a cigarette butt in her mouth. Chewed. She's a daredevil, that one.

I went to the urgent care center in our neighborhood as it was after regular business hours and waited for my name to be called. My eye was looked over quite promptly and quickly diagnosed as a simple staph infection; however, if I had known that there was an in-house doctor there who looked as fine as the one who had met with me (from what I could tell with my one good, unswollen eye, anyway) I probably would have gone in for that weird ingrown toenail-thing I had in June. I skip out to my car in the parking lot with a brown bag of ointment (free!) and antibiotic (not free, but necessary, I suppose).

Next morning: eyelid swollen, rash spreading, insatiable itch. Uh oh.

I head back to the doctor after much prodding from my husband as I really hate spending money on something like an itchy eye; but this seemed worthy and I couldn't ignore the fact that I might get to see Super Cute Doctor again. After waiting nearly an hour on a Saturday to be seen (and after lazily reading a tattered People magazine from 2005 and more than a little weirded out by the amount of germs that were probably living on those pages) I am finally told that it's shingles.

What?

I'm promptly given one of those cheap handouts on the wall next to, 'Asthma: It Ain't So Bad' and, 'So This is Your First Yeast Infection', or so I remember. It's been days since I was there.

So I did what anyone with an unknown affliction would do: I raced back home to log onto the internet and typed shingles into Google. I found out that it's basically adult chicken pox and after a little more research, one common denominator was that if it comes anywhere near the eyes, to get medical help immediately as it can cause blindness. Shit. This stuff started on my eyelash line.

I guess that's why I'm currently on two different antibiotics totalling 5500 mg/day for ten days; cause if I go blind tomorrow, I'm gonna be really ticked.

This morning I dressed her in pink

This weekend was fairly monumental.

First of all, I watched three movies; which we haven't done in nearly a year; as being repeatedly interrupted during a great film ranks right up there with an intense sunburn. On the bottom of my feet.

All of this movie watching was possible because we've only recently discovered the joy of setting up the baby pen in front of the television, or as it's more affectionately known in my house: the Den of Abandonment. It allows us to spend more than 2.35 minutes watching a program while ensuring that our child is not behind the bedroom door choking on the rubber doorstop.

In our overwhelming giddiness, we may have not made the most appropriate movie selections as new parents; but I thought we exhibited a fair amount of restraint, considering the last film I think I watched was Pirates of the Caribbean. Or maybe even Rocky 4.

Instead, we rented 300, The Last Samaurai and Apocolypto. With our child. In front of the tv screen. A virtual bloodbath. All of them.

I hope that what I've read is true about babies not having much rememberance of the first year; as I'd really like to swing by the video store tonight and pick up the Saw series.