This is the kind of shit I come up with when I don't have anything funny to say

Do yourself a favor and skip the entire middle section of this post. It is insane.

I've clearly been slacking on the blog posts. So I've promised myself all week that I would post something. So basically I'm warning you that I have nothing of substance to say and this is all going to be fluff and bullshit. Consider yourself warned and your time wasted.

Caitlyn... what has she been doing? Smacking me in the damn face, that's what. This started on Monday after I got home from work. She was in a mood. She had baby PMS. Every time she looked at me, it was to scowl and when I'd scowl back, she'd give me her best "whatchu talkin' bout Willis" look and smack me. Little jerk. According to the babysitter, she had been doing this all day. On Tuesday she seemed better, and she was her sweet, pleasant self for the babysitter. Then she got home and gave me dirty looks. It seems it's become something of a game for her. She isn't necessarily in a bad mood when she does it, she thinks it's funny. Obviously, I do not, and when I react unfavorably to her hilarious new game, then she does get pissed off and I get the scowl/smack combo platter.

As I had no real direction for this post to begin with, I'm going to veer off topic right here. The scowl/smack combo. It reminded me of something that I'm going to share with you. You will be better for it. Your life will never be the same again.

You know how sometimes, someone has offended you to your very core? Maybe it's your husband (usually it's your husband) and he's inadvertantly implied that you don't need a second Entenmann's chocolate donut. Maybe you are trying to discuss something important with him (or at least you will pretend it was important after it becomes clear that he has no idea what you just said) and he won't stop playing Call of Duty long enough to listen to your concerns. Maybe you've simply realized you hate his face.

My point is, you need to take action. You need to make it clear to him that these kinds of behaviors (and faces) are unacceptable. But how can you accomplish that? He's already ignoring you, and it only gets worse when you start to nag him. What can you possibly do to make sure you have his full, undivided attention? What will send the message that you mean business and that there will be consequences to his actions?

2 words, my friends:

FACEPUNCH/MOUTHFART.

And yes, I do consider it to be only 2 words. They are compound words, obviously.

The beauty of the FACEPUNCH/MOUTHFART combo platter is the many levels on which it is satisfying. First, you get the facepunch. A physical manifestion of your feelings. A call to action. The action of punching someone in the face. Don't feel bad, he totally deserved it (that donut thing? Yeah, he totally DID call you fat.). And it makes the second part of the platter so much easier to administer. Even if you've not been successful in knocking him to the ground, you've stunned him momentarily. He can't believe you just did that, you crazy bitch! And he surely isn't expecting part 2.

The mouthfart. This one isn't easy, and it rarely works more than once, because you only have the element of surprise on your side that first time. Pick your mouthfart moment carefully. You don't want to waste it. Also, nobody is going to stand by and willing let you fart in their mouth, so you have to be quick. Don't try to pull your pants down or some shit. That will put you in a vulnerable position and end your moment of triumph before it even happens. The mouthfart must be stealth for it to work. The elusive and unexpected mouthfart is the thing of legends. Make yourself a legend. FACEPUNCH/MOUTHFART will live on forever, haunting the dreams of your victim (husband).

Now back to our regularly scheduled program:

So Caitlyn is scowling and smacking. And besides that one day, it seems to only be directed at me. Last night, since time-outs haven't done a damn thing to head this off, I thought that maybe if I smacked her on her hand, just hard enough for her to realize it was unpleasant, maybe she would knock it off. I didn't do this unprompted, of course. I waited for her to smack me first. And when she did, I gave her a little slap on her hand to show her that hitting hurts.

And she smiled at me. And not just a regular smile either. She cocked her head to the side and gave me her best, side-eye "is that the best you got, bitch?" smile. She was unimpressed. Apparently hitting only hurts if your baby isn't a thug.

So I'm working on this. My mother thinks that maybe her time-outs need to be more than 90 seconds long. I wish I were exaggerating for entertainment value. 90 seconds is the absolute longest time-out she has ever gotten. So it's probably my fault for being terrible at disciplining my kid. It would probably be a little more impressive if I could wait a full 2 minutes or something.

So, any suggestions? Is my kid an asshole? Am I? Obviously she has decided to hate me from an early age since I'm the only one she's smacking, right? I thought I had till she was at least 13 before she hated me.

Damn it Feels Good

Nadine pointed out to me today that my blog format is kinda shitty. I've been noticing problems with some stuff too, but I am not good at this shit, so she sent me some links to templates and she's going to help me figure it out.

The problem is that I can't seem to find a template that conveys my vision. It has to say "KIDS" when you first see it, but then you realize it isn't actually for kids at all. My first thought, upon realizing this was that I need a template that includes Elmo drinking a beer. Or a couple of Muppets having sex. Do any of you know where I might find such a template?

On a completely unrelated note (Am I master of segues? You betcha.) Caitlyn has a new thing she's been doing and I just found out why. How to explain?

Did you all grow up in the ghetto? I can't say my town was exactly "the ghetto" (not then anyway), but it was most certainly ghetto-adjacent. So you know how sometimes when you are in the ghetto, you want to acknowledge another gangsta? What do you do? You don't smile. Not unless you wanna get shot. You don't shake a motherfucker's hand. And you sure as shit don't go up to him and say "hi there buddy! How have you been?".

No. What you do is a brief half-nod type gesture with your head. It isn't a regular nod exactly. There is no up-and-down motion. Just a quick up motion. You get what I'm saying here? It's a simple greeting. It says "I ain't no pig" or "I'm a Blood too" or "smiling is for bitches". What it doesn't say? "I still shit my pants". Someone needs to explain this to Caitlyn.

I've mentioned how much I love my new babysitter. She has taught Caitlyn so much and spends quality time with her and it's all great. We have been with her for almost 3 months now though, and I've yet to meet her boyfriend, who lives with her. This isn't a sticking point for me ... we tried to arrange a meeting and it just didn't happen because he works almost constantly.

So the babysitter and I were discussing this the other day. She mentioned that he was home the other day and offered to watch the kids while she ran out to the store or something. Despite the fact that this is the father of her son and that she trusts him completely, she respectfully declined to leave Caitlyn with him because Rodolfo and I had yet to meet him. She pointed out to him that he should think about how he would feel if they were to leave their son with a babysitter and came to pick him up to find him with someone they didn't know. It was an excellent point and I greatly appreciated her respect.

This isn't the point. My point is that we were discussing her boyfriend. She was saying how he usually comes from his first job and is home for a few minutes before leaving for his second. She pointed out that Caitlyn does know him, but mostly in passing. She told me that when he sees her, he greets her in a way that is unusual to greet a baby. He greets her with the thug head-nod. And she responds to his greeting, naturally, by returning the gesture. Which explains why she was doing this last weekend at my mother's house. I couldn't figure that one out for shit.

So once again, Caitlyn has proven that she is the Tupac to my Bow wow. I simply can't keep up with her level of street cred.

Do You Believe in Santa? How about Tylenol? Jesus?

Caitlyn is getting molars. I think. I mean, she's being an asshole and she's screaming a lot and won't sleep for more than 3 hours at a time. That sounds like molars, right? Fucking molars.

Last night was day 4 of Caitlyn's marathon screaming at bedtime. It was exceptionally bad because the screaming started well before we put her to bed. I frequently take showers with her as opposed to giving her a bath and she usually loves it. Last night though, she spent about half the time with her head on my shoulder while she shattered my eardrums with her wailing.

She screamed for another hour before bed, but she finally did go to sleep. For an hour. Then she woke up and cried for 10 more minutes before we all finally went to bed for the night. And by "the night" obviously I mean for another 2 or 3 hours.

The first time she woke up, she only cried for 5 minutes and dozed back off. Another hour after that when she awoke again, we figured we would give it a few minutes and hoped she would go back to sleep on her own. That was not the case. After 5 minutes of ear-shattering screams, I tried to console Caitlyn and gave her a bottle. She refused the bottle and nothing I did could calm her down. That isn't easy. When you know your kid is in pain and nothing you are doing is helping... man, you just sort of feel like an asshole.

About 25 minutes into this ordeal, Rodolfo and I were scrambling for anything that might help. I even took a teething ring out of the freezer at 4:30 in the fucking morning because I thought she might want it. She did not. Then I realized that enough time had passed and she could have some more Tylenol. In case you are wondering, it's really hard to find an bottle of Tylenol at 4:30 in the morning, because Rodolfo gave up after roughly 10 seconds and told me to find it.

I found the Tylenol and figured I had another 15 or 20 minutes till it kicked in, so I laid Caitlyn on my chest and tried to close my eyes. She continued to scream. By the time 10 or 15 minutes had passed I was exhausted and frustrated- especially since I was taking care of the baby while Rodolfo went back to sleep. He is working a late shift today (meaning he can sleep as late as Caitlyn does) and I had to be up at 6:30 this morning. I didn't point this out right away though, because he is usually really good about getting up with her at night. Until.

Caitlyn's crying had jarred him out of his peaceful slumber once again, to which he responded "I knew Tylenol wasn't going to do anything. I don't even believe in Tylenol". That's right, folks. He doesn't believe in Tylenol. And who can blame him? Tylenol is a Scientologist.

My husband is Hispanic. He is superstitious. Once, when Caitlyn was only a couple of months old, he was convinced that someone had given her the "evil eye" when I took her to the mall that day because she was being really fussy when we got home. He immediately got his mom on the web cam where she said some sort of prayer to... exorcise the evil eye, I suppose? And did I mention the part about the egg? He didn't do it, because he doesn't know the "right way" (is there a right way to do voodoo?) but his mother explained to him that he should take a raw egg and roll it up and down Caitlyn's body. When he is finished, if he has done it correctly, the egg should be cooked, which would indicate that the heat from the bad vibes have been removed from the baby and absorbed into the egg. I mean, if my baby's body is hot enough to cook an egg, I'm going to take her to the hospital because she probably has some sort of horrific infection, but I guess it could totally be the evil eye too. But really, who needs antibiotics when you have an egg. Did I mention that she didn't have a fever through any of this? Evil eye is stealth like that.

So as I was saying, this man decided that he does not believe in Tylenol. Because, fucking TYLENOL people. Science and modern medicine is total bullshit anyway. Except for that time he had thyroid cancer. And appendicitis. But seriously, those were isolated incidents. If his mom had been in the country, she would have just cured him with an egg or maybe with the cancer she would have had to sacrifice a live chicken or something. I don't know how that shit works. I'm not a (witch) doctor.

My point (if I ever decide to make it) is that the comment about Tylenol pissed me off. It was the one thing that might have actually helped Caitlyn feel better and let us get some sleep. And this dumb ass is telling me he doesn't believe in it after 10 minutes of waiting for it to kick in so his beauty sleep is no longer being interrupted. I rolled my eyes and made a snide comment about how he's a moron or something like that. And he got ridiculously pissed off.

And then we had a fight at 5:00 in the morning while Caitlyn screamed in the background. That's what happens when you don't get any sleep. You have irrationally strong responses to Tylenol and snide comments and you wanna murder your spouse.

And now back to work ... the work of trying not to fall asleep at my desk. Fucking teething, man.

Lessons I'm Going to Learn for You

So you thought that last post was pretty bad, did you? Well you are in for a treat. I've done something monumentally stupid. I taught my kid the word "asshole".

I'm kind of notorious for being a bit of a klutz. So was the case last week, when I bumped Caitlyn's head on a doorway. For the third time. Rodolfo made some jerky comment to the end of "Caitlyn is in danger every time she is with you", which probably doesn't sound THAT mean, but you see, I was PMSing. And Rodolfo is notorious for being an asshole.

Naturally, I reacted by telling him he was being an asshole. And then I turned to my 13 month old daughter; "Caitlyn, tell Daddy he is being an asshole". Caitlyn responded without missing a beat: "Asshole" (Yes, in fact, she DID say it with a capital "A". She's gangsta like that.). And so began the watching of my mouth.

Now usually when Caitlyn starts saying a new word, she needs to be prompted in some way to get her to say it. She sees the cat and says "kitty'. I'll sing a song to her and she sings back (doo doo doo, doo doo doo to the Rocky theme song when my dad started singing it to her this weekend, and the same while I made the "dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun" you-are-about-to-be-eaten-by-a-shark Jaws theme while we were in the pool). And Da-DEE. Oh how she loves to call her Da-DEE every time she sees him. So what, you might wonder, would prompt her to start saying "asshole" 25 times a day?

The dog. I'm starting to see a theme in my mommy failures. I have no choice but to take the credit for prompting her to say asshole, but my husband refuses to recognize his involvement in all of this. If I haven't mentioned it before, here it is: Rodolfo hates the dog. HATES. Really. Before Caitlyn's birth, he merely tolerated the dog, but now he constantly reminds me that I "don't have time for a dog and a baby" and presses me almost daily to find a new home for him. Whatevs dude. My point is that he has a little nickname for the dog. Can you guess what it is? Yup, that's right. He calls the dog "asshole". All. The. Time.

All of these elements led to one inevitable conclusion. With such an exciting new word in her vocabulary and the nearly constant prompting to say it (I mean, that's what Daddy says every time he sees Joey), Caitlyn has come to call Joey "Asshole". She seems 100% convinced that this is his name, which explains the capital "A", I guess.

I'm doing my best to correct her when she does say it, reminding her that, in fact, the dog's name is JOEY. But to no avail. And when she does say it, she says it like 10 times in a row. It's really hard not to laugh. Rodolfo is significantly less amused.

Lesson? Learned, my friends. Let me take this one off your hands for you. Don't tell your kid to say asshole, okay? Ever.