The other morning I realized I had forgotten to put a new 12-pack of Cokes in the fridge the night before and that I’d have to forage for change in order to buy a new cold one at work. I remembered that I had two shiny quarters on my desk, but then got distracted by something and didn’t go snag them.

A few minutes later, I heard Spike say, “Look Daddy! MONEYS” and though I feebly said, “Those are Mommy’s moneys,” I didn’t have the heart to rip a couple of quarters out of his fat little hand. I just went and got his piggy bank and let him put them in. I did this with a heavy and Cokeless heart.

Then Spike and Larry left for school, and I thought, You know what? No one’s here. I’ma go get those quarters back out of that piggy bank! and even though I also thought What kind of mother are you? Stealing from your baby? I countered that thought with Oh yeah, well, he stole them from me first. So I opened the bank (no, of course I didn’t have to smash it! they don’t even make shitty banks like that anymore, do they? this one had the little rubber thing at the bottom) and found two quarters to supplement the third quarter I knew I had in my wallet.

So, you know, I’m jingle-janglin’ to the Coke machine, nothing to see here, just stole some money out of my little boy’s piggy bank NO BIGGIE and one of the quarters didn’t work. This isn’t unusual, as our Coke machine sucks and often you have to put actual force behind your coin-dropping to make it take. So I shove the quarter in a few more times and then I looked at it. And it was totally one of these.

When you’re wearing a white shirt and eating a barbeque sandwich, do you ever reach down to wipe your hand on your napkin but, owing to the fact that you are also reading, don’t notice that you just wiped your hand on your shirt instead? Yeah, me neither.

Internet, would you spend two hours of your life sitting in a room talking about local hospitals for a focus group? What if they paid you $70 for your time? According to my calculations, $70 could buy me 14 more barbeque sandwiches or at least three sale-rack white shirts.

In other news, Spike says hi.

• Overheard in J. Crew:
Lady: What do you think? Could I get away with wearing this scarf?
Teenage daughter: Do what you want. I don’t care.

• Today at the corner of Fortification and Greymont, I saw a well-dressed man cross the street with something in both of his hands. Upon closer inspection, I saw that he had three lightbulbs in one hand and two in the other.

• At the same intersection, I saw a lady put on deodorant in her car. Oh wait! That was me.

• I have a few product endorsements for you for no particular reason than these products have brought me great joy lately:

1. Woolite One Step Carpet Cleaner. This is the carpet cleaner that I would’ve waited my whole life for if I were the sort of person who waited on carpet cleaner. The can specifically says it takes out fruit juice stains, and as some little baby has dribbled his apple juice all over my precious living room rug, I really needed this promise to be true. So you vaccum your carpet, spray this stuff on it, let it sit for 15 minutes, and then vacuum again. And people: the stains, lo, they are gone. There is no scrubbing. The stains magically disappear. Also, the stuff is like $3.

2. Revlon ColorStay eyeliner. I’m a big fan of eyeliner in general, but have always had a problem finding a perfect one that wasn’t too smeary or wasn’t too hard. This stuff is rad: it’s not an actual pencil, so there’s no sharpening going on (and therefore no shards of wood to accidentally jab into your eye): you just twist and more magic, glide-on eyeliner comes out. It stays put and doesn’t rip off your eyelids upon application.

• I read that potato peel pie book. You know the one. You know what? It wasn’t bad. Not the best book I ever read, but it was enjoyable, a quick read, and had the added bonus of letting me learn something else gross about World War II along the way. While I wouldn’t have sought out the book, it literally arrived on my desk and so I took that as a sign and read it. (My sign reading is very subjective, as I did not read the other books that arrived on my desk.)

• Attention anyone who misses the Doag Loaver! The house across the street from hers is for sale. You’re welcome.

• While it is every parent’s responsibility to teach their children the important things in life, I have apparently chosen to teach my tiny baby (who is now a big boy of 16 months!) the dumbest things ever, such as: (1) that if he points at me, I will touch my index finger to his and say “ding,” and then he will say “ding,” and then we will do this over and over; (2) instead of putting the nice stacking rings on the little post like you’re supposed to, we shall instead put them on our heads and wear them as hats; and (3) when eating crunchy things, it is important to squint, show all one’s teeth, and go hi-ya-ya-ya-ya while chewing quickly. You should try the last one. It’s fun.

There is a special item at Long John Silver’s right now, according to the commercials, people! It’s called the Baja Fish Taco. For a moment, let us imagine what a Baja Fish Taco might be, even at a fried fish emporium. Most fast food places now offer fake healthy items (KFC grilled chicken, anyone? Oprah?), so I imagined it would be a fish-shaped object with fake grill marks wrapped in a tortilla. OH NO. It is a FRIED fish-shaped object, “crumblies,” and “baja sauce” wrapped in a tortilla. Why do I think that’s so funny? Funny enough to write down, then type out to tell you about?

Spike is fond of pulling books off the bookshelf, and almost every day, even if he isn’t in a particularly book-pulling mood, he pulls one particular book off the shelf and throws it on the floor. It’s Our Town by Cynthia Carr. Is he trying to tell me something? I haven’t read it, but…maybe I should.

So I got my hair cut at a new place last week, which was good because my usual hairdresser tends to give me a good haircut approximately every third time I come to see her. Anyway, we all know that hairdressers tend to lavish compliments on their customers, as this results in higher tips. (Once I was at the Gap and there was this girl stationed at the door apparently assigned to compliment the customers as they came in. I heard her tell someone her hair was cute, that she liked another person’s purse, and then she said this to me: “I like the way your jeans fit you.”) However, my new hairdresser took it a little far, as these are the compliments I received:

1. “That’s a cute outfit.”
2. “You’ve got great style.”
3. “What? You have a baby? But you’re so thin!”
4. “You remind me of Scarlett Johanssen. Do you get that a lot?”

The only compliment I was willing to believe was number one. Number two feels generic, number three is obviously disingenuous, and number four…oh, number four. I was going to say that I was the opposite of Scarlett Johanssen, but the exact opposite would be, say, Urkel. However, I am not disparaging myself by saying I HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON WITH SCARLETT JOHANSSEN, ESPECIALLY IN MY BRA.

Here was what was happening in my house about an hour ago: Spike was pissed off, tired, screaming, and ready for bed. We went to start running his bath water and discovered that Pete had exploded all over the bathroom.

Turds. Turds and barf and a pile of something that could’ve been either one. Pete is fond of barfing into an article of clothing or a towel and then politely folding the garment in half — this time it was the rug that looked like it had just fallen, folded and barfless, out of the cabinet. Because Spike was a thrashing howler monkey and was attached to my person, I dumped him into the pack and play, which he did not appreciate, and which caused the already horrifying noises to come out of his tiny body to become louder and more murderous. So then I threw away the rug, dumped Pete’s litter box, refilled it, and coughed through a cloud of dust kicked up by the cheap clay litter Pete’s delicate sensibilities insist upon (he does not care for clumping kind, thank you very much, and he does not care for scented litter — and, while he is an asshole, when Pete insists upon something, I listen). THEN I had to mop the bathroom, all the while listening to Spike scream and sob.

Spike continued to sob through his bath, pausing occasionally to laugh at his bath toys. It sounded like this: WAH WAH WAH HA HA HA HA! (pause) WAH WAH WAH WAH. Then he cried through drying off, getting his pajamas on, and me fixing his nighttime bottle. The moment the child was finished with the bottle, he threw it on the floor and passed out.

And I totally forgot to tell you that when we were coming back into the living room I could totally smell cat turds and knew that my turd wrasslin’ wasn’t over for the night, but it turned out to be pretty easy to find because there was a carefully folded baby blanket on the floor. Pete is like one of those serial killers who can’t resist leaving a calling card.

Anyway, hi! Hope you’re having a good night.

So I was correct: bragging about Spike’s food consumption was just asking for him to throw all his dinner on the floor. I keep threatening to throw all my food on the floor, too, just to see what the appeal is, but as I will also be the one to have to mop it up, I just can’t bring myself to do so.

In Facebook news, yesterday I defriended someone for the first time. Oh, what fun! I would consider defriending the author of the following status messages if I didn’t find them so irritatingly entertaining:

Jenny McHappy Elation is gonna DRINK SOME ICE TEA!!!!!!!!!!!!! ~~WOOOO~~and then I’m gonna TAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jenny McHappy Elation LOVES CAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Watch out b. crocker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jenny McHappy Elation is gonna cook up some SKETTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 Yum!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then her friends comment that she is such a good cook, can they come over for dinner, et cetera. I can only hope that somewhere, Jenny McHappy Elation has an exclamation point-laden blog where she is writing the following:

Y’ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have the most BORING facebook friend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She doesn’t use ANY EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I bet if she ate my sketty she would!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL Gotta go drink some KOOLAID and jump in da pool OH YEAH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I made this the other day. It was worth it. I ignored those stupid berries, though.

Can we just forget I said I was going to read Lolita? Thanks. I just read Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger by Lee Israel. Do you like tiny memoirs where people pretend to be sorry for the things they did but are really very proud of their work because their forgeries are hilarious? You’ll love this, then. Here’s some stuff about it.

I was just looking through a stranger’s set of photos on Facebook — dammit, I love looking at strangers’ photos — that were all headshots for professional use. The photos featured a prominent chest mole. Not a cute birthmark, but a big ole moley mole. All of the photos, people…every last one. It was on a spot she could’ve covered, a spot that 90% of my clothes cover anyway. I’m wondering if there is some mole power movement going on.

In other skin-related news, Spike has a weird rash. I am a champion symptom Googler and I came up with nothing, so here, fellow mamas who like consulting Dr. Google, perhaps your child has this: flat red spots all over the body, mostly on the arms and legs, but with larger, still-flat red welt-esque things that suspiciously appear and disappear at random (usually on the back). Is your child exhibiting these symptoms, yet is feverless, cheerful, eating well, singing songs, pushing a Swiffer around the house? Congratulations! I will save you $134 (some of that was for the strep test) and tell you that your child has a RASH VIRUS.

A few weeks ago Spike had a high fever for several days with no other symptoms. For $80, I learned that he had the popular FEVER VIRUS.

“Virus,” while accurate and actually a word that means something, is also a clever descriptor that means “I don’t know.” Put your symptom in front of the word “virus” and voila! You have an official diagnosis. Par example: do you want a cheeseburger? HUNGER VIRUS. Overslept this morning? SLEEP VIRUS.

By the way, you owe me $134.

Spike, who likes to play with my cell phone, apparently needed to know the weather one day and therefore accessed the Weather Channel on my non-internet-capable phone. It cost $7.99.

I might’ve proclaimed my love for this before, but we’ve reunited recently and our love cannot be stopped: cheesecake-flavored spready cream cheese. Dudes. Just try it. It will change your life.

If you have a scaly, eczema-ridden baby, I highly recommend Baby Phisoderm for all your baby washing needs. You can only get it online and it comes in a pack of six bottles, but it lasted us a whole year. It smells awesome, too: authentically babylike.

So, I read Twilight. While I certainly see the appeal of Edward (pretty, feels like marble), I have major problems with some of the more implausible plot points (Bella tells her cop dad “I’m outta here” and he just lets her go? no way) and even majorer problems with the overuse of adverbs, Sally wrote wryly.

However, I also recently read a fantastic book, which, if you live in Mississippi, you are hereby required to read: Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. Set in Jackson in the 60s, it’s just heartbreaking and interesting and funny and well-written and if you’re from here you will die every time a character walks down Belmont and turns onto Myrtle or when someone shops at the Jitney 14. It is not my #1 all-time favorite contemporary novel about Mississippi — always and forever, I pledge my troth to The Heaven of Mercury by Brad Watson — but it is a great book.

Eating sushi in my car makes me feel like a homeless person, albeit one who found a few dollars on the ground and decided to go purchase some grocery store sushi, which is surprisingly not terrible sushi actually.

I had a dream the other night that The Rock was trying to get it on with me in my state senator’s front yard. When I told Mr. The Rock that while I was flattered, we were certainly in different eschalons of attractiveness, he feigned confusion until I pointed at his thigh as evidence.

Spike took a few steps yesterday at school! While I was not there to see it, luckily, the janitor was and demonstrated Spike’s moves for me when I went to pick him up yesterday.

Last night Spike started screaming around 12:30 — sometimes he cries out in his sleep, but this was more of a bad-dream scream — and when I looked into his crib I was very surprised that he was alone. Where is the other baby and the koala bear? I wondered. Then I realized that I had been dreaming.

OMG MAYBE HE WAS DREAMING THAT AN EXTRA BABY AND A KOALA BEAR WERE IN HIS CRIB.

Gorjus wrote this for the occasion of Spike’s birthday. All I have to say is, best godfather ever.

Dear Spike (At One)

Before you were born, your momma
used to drink buckets of beer and quote Smiths lyrics,
used to make grown men blush and stammer. (more…)

I’m just going to refer you to this already-posted poem for today’s poem, since it’s Spike’s first birthday and this is pretty much the only poem about motherhood that I can stomach.

So: a year ago today at this time I was in a world of hurt, but my doctor was about to come in and save the day by giving me a damn c-section and getting this baby out of me. Man, the year has flown by. Those first three weeks were like molasses, gruelling, tear-stained, sleep-deprived molasses, but the rest of the weeks and months went quickly. If this is what the rest of my life is going to be like, I’m pretty much going to go to bed tonight and wake up 90.

In honor of Spike’s first birthday — seriously, is it possible that he’s a year old? — I have made a list of the things I love about him.

I love the way he tries to pants me in the morning when he crawls up and yanks on my pajamas; I love the way he tries to comb my hair but really just pounds on my head with his comb; I love that I can read his mind by the way he’s laughing; I love that he can locate each errant particle of dirt, dust, crunched up leaf, dog hair, or choking hazard on the floor and that he points at said items and looks up at me like I am the maid; I love that he is completely silent and lost in thought when we go for walks; I love that older black ladies have a particular fondness for him and that going to the grocery store is a flirtfest; I love that he loves looking at his books and turning the pages, even though he doesn’t really like for me to read them to him; I love the way his baby toes smell; I love that even though he doesn’t look like me, every once in awhile I catch a glimpse of myself in the way his hands move; I love that he loves the cats, even though the cats are stupid and hate his guts; and I love that having him around colors my perception of everything, even episodes of Law and Order where there are creepy duos of mother-and-son killers.

So to sum up: Spike is awesome.

Spike had ear tubes put in last December, and yesterday had icky stuff draining out of his ear. I turned to my friend Dr. Google for advice, and apparently there is more than one mother who believes that these are valid solutions for ear infections:

1. Squirt breast milk in there.
2. Take the baby to a chiropractor.

I find both of these to be the same flavor of crazy. In related news, why is it that people who write about kooky, non-trad remedies cannot spell? My babies ear ache was AWEFUL!!!!!!!!

Because he is a good little internet baby, Spike knew all the posts about him were under the “no wire hangers” category. (more…)

My father-in-law (who is happily married, btw) said he was going out on New Year’s Eve to find him a cougar with a lot of money to take care of him. Then Larry pointed out that the lady in question would have to be around 90 to qualify as a cougar for a 65-year-old man. Oh, and then I laughed at him.

Happy new year! How long are you allowed to say happy new year? Just on new year’s day? The first month? Until you stop writing the wrong year on things? Larry and I had a huge new year’s eve this year complete with baby barf and everyone going to bed at 9:15 and not waking up until 6:30 the next morning. If getting barfed on is the price I have to pay for a full night’s sleep, I WILL TAKE IT. DO YOU HEAR ME UNIVERSE. Spike apparently had either the mildest virus in the history of the world — a couple of barfs and one explosive poo — or else he just felt like barfing on me a few times. As you do.

I am reading, at the internet’s recommendation, American Wife. And it is amazing. This kind of book love is a rare, but oh, when it happens, it is so sweet.

Have y’all seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang? I started watching it with pretty low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Reasons I liked it: it is a caper; Val Kilmer’s character is named Gay Perry; the voiceover bits made me laugh. I should try having low expectations all the time.

That is all.