happyccino is my only friend

i sometimes suffer insomnia. for weeks, out of the blue, i wake up many times during the night. so annoying! and i'm a little sleepy the next day, but nothing too traumatic.

but those other times. ah, jeez. i have trouble falling asleep until the wee hours of the night. i watch tv for a while, i read for a while. then i give up and lie there in the dark trying to bore myself to sleep.

and hey - if it happened only once in a while, i wouldn't complain. well, ok, maybe just a little. but i wouldn't need my friend, my love, the english toffee cappuccino tim brings me when he comes home from work in the morning following my night of sleeplessness. my happyccino.

i try to stay away from caffeine normally. but, oh, the sweet nectar of wakefulness. when i need you, you're there for me with no questions. steaming away my sluggishness. fortifying my foggy mind with your frothy faithfulness. calming me with creamy caffeination. and surely my trembling appendages are your way of ensuring my body burns off the extra calories you provide? oh, how i love thee.

plus, isn't that cup fabulous? i am inspired by the color combination and the gentle waves and that bold font on the horizontal strip. i'm not kidding. i'm going to translate this cup into a scrapbook page. maybe about happyccino.

my babies! they're adults!

andrew was my first baby. my chubby bubby. for seventeen years, my chubby chickie tori was the baby of the family. (note: andrew was most certainly chubby. tori? not so much. she was a scrawny thing like timmy. but we still called her chubby chickie.)

i can't believe they're adults. twenty-one and twenty. and that they live regular ol' adult lives in chicago. so far away! i miss my babies. and i can't post any pictures of them. my stinkin' desktop needs to go into the shop and i don't have any on my laptop.

on the bright side . . . i can listen to whatever music i want in the car. what? no i can't! timmy is a little dictator when it comes to his music machine cd. but my house smells a lot less like stinky socks and there are no stray dishes in the family room. i suppose it's true everything's a trade-off.

highway safety, or the incident

one time? on the way to sears in the mall? we needed to merge into the right-hand lane and our turn was fast approaching on an insanely busy street.

at this point in time, tim hadn't too many years of city driving under his belt yet, having mostly experienced the wide-open, can-see-for-miles highways of western kansas. so stop-and-go traffic wasn't his thing. gas pedal? oh, yeah. but followed immediately with the brake? what nonsense!

so, we're lurching along when we notice our immediate need to be in the other lane. in front of us was a huge city bus. behind us? a tour bus. beside us in our lane of choice? a large dump truck and just the tiniest of open space behind it with another city bus fast approaching.

my mario andretti took milliseconds to decide, shouted, "hang on, family!" hit the brakes to swerve into that minuscule (and getting "minusculer" by the second) spot and instantaneously stomped the gas to shoot onto the frontage road as that same spot closed again with the city bus now bumper to bumper with the dump truck.

it all happened so quickly. at the first swerve, i looked back at the kids (who were, oh . . . 7 and 8 years old?). andrew's eyes were wide with horror and his mouth hung open. tori's balled fists pressed against her eyes. my only thought? 'my children!' but nobody made a sound.

tim moseyed into a parking spot at sear's, turned off the ignition, laughed nervously and inquired, "everybody ok?" andrew and i were still stunned (the hysteria came much later), but tori's small sad voice floated up from the back seat, "i never knew how much i love my family until just now."

this story became known as "the incident." it was the first in a long line of incidents at which we can now laugh.

apparently, observation is not my forte

my friend cruz emailed me that she'd just discovered the ends of her aluminum foil box had tabs to press in to prevent the roll from jumping out of the box when used. i'd never heard such a thing.

i looked in my drawer and sure enough! my plastic wrap, my foil - every one of them has offered me a very simple way to avoid the less-than-Christlike attitude resulting from my roll jumping right out of the box at the most inopportune time.

sometimes i get a little . . . oh, i don't know . . . judgmental? . . . about people in my life. i think i'm pretty successful at not behaving or speaking in a judgmental way, but having those thoughts is wrong. i'll be well-served by remember what an idiot i can be, and this picture will certainly remind me.

i need more sleep and fewer pounds

just messing around this afternoon while tim and timmy are running errands. found a website that uses face recognition software on a photo you upload to determine your celebrity look-alikes. being curious (and bored), i snapped a quick self-portrait.

and, of the ten look-alikes, i most resembled . . .

a bunch of fat old asian men.

plus kathy bates.

alcohol + big mouth = jail

tim came home from work this morning a little scraped up. i sometimes dread hearing the answer to, "how was your day/night, honey?" because i worry. worrying is what i do best.

and i've seen firsthand how danger can come out of nowhere on the job. when andrew and tori were teenagers going out with their friends on the weekends (and before timmy), i'd occasionally ride along with tim for a few hours. i never got out of the car and if the need for an arrest arose, another officer would take me home, generally. but i did see a few scary things.

and once, after a dinner out on tim's night off, we encountered a seemingly drunk driver - or who maybe, we thought, was having a diabetic emergency? - who drove wicked-fast and super-slow and weaved (wove?) violently from lane to lane to lane, even kicking up gravel from the opposite shoulder. tim called for an officer and got out to explain the situation when the stop was made. suddenly, tim reached in and pulled the driver out through his window and onto the ground. before we (andrew and tori and i) could take our next breaths, the driver was cuffed and being held against his car hood. (note to the young and/or stupid: seriously? do not reach toward a weapon "just to let the officer know it's there" as this could result in your demise.) this night, everyone went home safely, but it so easily could have ended tragically.

but this morning? tim's hand suffered a few scrapes and scratches from tackling a guy who ran. after running his mouth non-stop. i believe alcohol was involved, as is so often the case. always patient and slow to be provoked, i've noticed tim's even more reluctant to engage in physical altercations as he ages, but sometimes cannot avoid it. and so i worry. and pray. and thank God he grew up a "fightin' sumbitch" as was common in his neck o' the woods. i take comfort in knowing he can throw a beat-down when necessary to preserve life and limb.

oh, and happy father's day, tim. i love you!

tt's on the telephone

my boy loves the linen closet. always has. starting when he was just a year and a half old, he's gone to the linen closet's second shelf to sing, throw tantrums, drive (he's an "ice road trucker" this week) or, like today, have long phone conversations to avoid putting on sleepie-time undies and nappie-time clothes.

please witness today's conversation with his sister "tt" [tori]. he's asking (and i quote), "tt, what day was it you came to our home to visit after going to outback steakhouse after we picked you up at the airport, but it wasn't the airport in sugarcago [chicago, where tori lives and we visit] but it was near my home when we drove to the airport and there was a really big sculpture at the airport and we saw an airplane in the sky and we thought you might be driving it? was it dark? i think it was dark." i opened the door and took his picture just as he finished his question/monologue:

he got a little cold, so he asked me to please close the door while he was talking. he told tt our little secret: "i peepeed on some berries on the evergreen tree at mcdonald's today." (please forgive me, mcdonald's. we forgot to bring our potty seat and he simply refuses to enter your disgustingly filthy restroom.)

when i opened the door again, he looked like this:

above, you see him asking me "mommy? could you please cover up my toes with this towel so i can cozy up here and nap?"

and then he spit when i told him it was time for nappie in his bed. those toddler moods can turn on a dime, i tell ya.