Ten D Things

My Sister-In-Law tagged me with D and I'm too tired to come up with anything interesting or witty on my own right now so here goes

Diapers - For the last 3 or 4 days, Parker's been waking up with diapers that are absolutely soaking. I don't mean "boy these are really wet" diapers, I mean the kind of diapers that have soaked through the diaper, through his jammy pants and even a bit of his blanket. It's very odd since the amount of liquid he's consumed hasn't increased, nor has the time between diaper changes. I've also noticed the pudginess of his hands has decreased a bit and I'm wondering if he's just dumping a ton of water weight and if so, why? And why only while he's sleeping? His after-nap diapers are more wet than usual, too.

Dreams - Along with the prison break/coding dream I've been having some pretty strange dreams lately. The kind of dreams one has while sporting a fever and taking some sort of codeine laced cough syrup, which I'm not. For instance I just woke from my afternoon nap having a dream about catching a beautiful blue and black butterfly that, at first, turned into a little human girl with short black hair that sparkled like there was glitter in it, then into a semi-adult male that ate all of the shrimp my mom had hanging on the clothesline for dinner. Yeah, I know - the weirdest thing about the dream AFTER waking up was not that a butterfly turned into a human, which is actually kinda cool, but that my mom was hanging shrimp on a clothesline. I've also had a dream about living in a farm house in the middle of nowhere with the girls I use to be a nanny for that had baby peacocks the size of chicks running around everywhere. I had 3 cats in the dream (the two I have now and the one Betty had when we lived together) and was worried they would eat the baby peacocks. Although in real life none of the cats are related or look similar, in my dream the two I have now looked identical. I could go on, but trust me, just really strange dreams.

Dining Table - I just realized the other day that my eldest son has only lived in a house that sported a dining table for 3 of his 14 years. Well, that's not true, we had a dining table before we moved to Toledo but we stopped eating at it once one of the chairs cracked under the weight of a normal size person sitting on it. It was my grandmother's table set and it was in pretty rough shape. I still own the table and still dream of refinishing it once we have a place that has a formal dining room. Currently we're eating at a card table lent to us by Monkey's parents because the dining table we picked out wouldn't fit where we wanted to put it so we canceled the order and now are stuck because we need a whole different kind of wood finish than we had planned on. But for most of his life Lou has eaten Japanese style at a beautiful marble top coffee table that sits really low and is perfectly square that I happened upon. Some day I'm going to refinish that, too. :D

Come to think of it, I didn't eat at a dining table much growing up either. We ate in the living room on TV trays.

Drips - It's been raining since Mother's Day here. Big, fat drips that SPLAT!! when they fall. The ground's so soggy Monkey can't mow the lawn and Parker can't go out to play. Every day he brings me my hat or my purse or a shoe belonging to him or myself. Every day I have to listen to him fuss while his cabin fever takes control. I'd take him out in it but it's also pretty chilly. So instead I catch him reorganizing my kitchen cupboards.


Dog - For some odd reason dogs have been a peripheral part of my life lately. My mother's dog is now a happy member of my Tover's family. My mom (step) had to have her Yorkie, Teddy, sniped instead of studding him out like she intended because he wouldn't quit peeing on her refrigerator. This completely crushed my dreams of owning Teddy's offspring and naming her "Bear." If you would have asked me a month ago I would have told you I was pretty apprehensive about my in-law's dog, Louie, being around Parker. He's old and doesn't understand babies and can get grumbly and has even tried to nip a little. But the last time we were there Louie put me at complete and total ease when Parker essentially was laying on him and Louie just grumbled. If he was going to ever bite Parker it would have been then and he didn't even try. He just grouched a bit, and who wouldn't? Someone your same size just comes and lays on you, uninvited. Parker still has yet to learn that cuddling things SMALLER than you means gently petting them, not laying on them like he does on mommy and daddy when he cuddles.

Dancers - No not the topless kind (although that's what my mother-in-law thought Monkey meant when he told her I "use to be a dancer")! When I was pregnant with Parker I realized how long it's been since I went out dancing. Nothing says "I am so UN-hip that I make the bible belt look like Paris" like dancing the drunken white girl dance while sober, 8 months pregnant and dancing with your mom in a bar while your dad plays drums to "When Josie Comes Home." I'm surprised Monkey didn't run screaming from the place. But then again, he witnesses me doing stupid little dances all day long.. The "happy ice cream" dance, the "I'm going to see my family" dance, the "Parker's got a yard" dance. You get the point. Dancing is still part of who I am, but it's no where near ALL that I am. I guess it was fate that I injured my ankle in high school and my dreams of becoming a choreographer were pretty much crushed because to make anything of yourself as a dancer that's WHAT and WHO you are, in your entirety. I am so much more eclectic.

Dora - Lou wanted me to put this one - said I HAD to... Because the only imitations I can do on demand (and I do them really well actually) are voices from children's shows, including "Swiper" from Dora the Explorer. I do Swiper from Dora, Blue from Blue's Clues, and a couple of others. I can also do Chris from Family Guy but not on demand. I'll have to post an audio file of me doing them for you sometime. I'm quite proud. I'm sure my mommy and daddy are, too.

Dark Age of Camelot - Ok for those that aren't officially nerds, let me explain that Dark Age of Camelot, or DAoC, doesn't have anything to do with Sean Connery, or renaissance festivals. It's actually a MMORPG... Or Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game. The "role playing" part really has so very little to do with these kinds of games anymore that gamers have come to call them just MMO's. Think of a video game that you can play with literally hundreds of people at the same time. With or against them. DAoC was the first of it's kind really. But it's not why I write about it here. I write about it because DAoC gave me my life. And, quite literally, Parker's. I played DAoC for about three years total. One year before I met Monkey while playing and two years after. Yep - I met the love of my life and the father of my child in a video game. I was the leader of a huge guild (sort of like a club) and some friends of mine that were in my guild asked if she could join. You read that right, when I first met Monkey I thought he was a girl. Lest you question his preferences, a LOT of male MMO players pick female characters to play. The reasons vary from "Norse chicks are hot" to "People give female characters free stuff" to "It's as far away from who I am in real life as I can get." to "All the male characters run really dumb." And most do it for a combination of these reasons. Regardless, he and I became really good friends even though I still thought he was a girl. It was when I started to crush on him hard that I figured out he must be a guy. I was right, thank God, and that, combined with the facts that he was single and only lived an hour from me and four years later and you have Parker. :)

Doors - To close my bedroom door all I need to do is yell out "My door is closed." It would be really super cool, sort of like house of the future voice command, except for one thing. My bedroom door is invisible. As in, it doesn't exist. When I yell out "my door is closed" that's simply my way of telling my eldest that I'm changing and to not come into my room or into the part of the kitchen that adjoins my room. This, despite the fact that there ARE four OTHER doors, not including closet doors, in my room. Yes, my room has a door to the front yard, a door to the back yard, a door to the laundry room and a door to our private bath, but it has no door to the rest of the house. Needless to say, closing the door this way doesn't always work when you're talking to a 14 year old listening to System of a Down on his Ipod and we'll be hanging a REAL door very very soon.

Downy - After about the first three months that we lived in the apartments that we moved to here from, we had un-softened clothes. This was because the laundry room was in the basement and we were on the third floor, unable to hear when the washer would go into spin cycle. For awhile we tried using a Downy ball, which I had been using for years previous anyway, but they kept getting stolen. That's right - if you left your laundry in the washer for even 20 minutes after it had been finished, your clothes would end up in a soggy, wet pile on top of a filthy folding table (unless your basket was by the washer, then they would be tossed into that at least) and your Downy ball would be missing. Unfortunately after we stopped using Downy balls we still had two nearly full bottles of fabric softener, which we kept. The first load of laundry I did here in our new house I was excited beyond belief to be grabbing for one of those two bottles... and ... *glump* promptly learned that if left for over two years, Downy dehydrates and turns into concentrated fabric softener sludge that has yet to be reconstituted properly.. I keep adding water and shaking the shit out of it but all it seems to do is make the glumps into lumps. Watery glumpy lumps then stick to your clothes and you have to wash them twice. But I'm not giving in! I will be victorious! For this is not just a war against scratchy laundry! Or against glumpy lumpy fabric softener! This is a war against ball stealers everywhere!

There you have it, my list of 10 D things. Whew, and I thought this post would be easy. o.O If you'd like to be tagged for it, just let me know and you'll get whatever letter Parker eats last in a handful of Alphabits.