The Truth Fairy

Bonus finally lost his first tooth.

Well, technically, he didn't "loose it" so much as I convinced him that my friend Carrie was a dentist and therefore was fully trained on the fine art of tooth removal.

He did look a little concerned when she shoved a paper towel in his mouth and considering she had just been holding rabbits in the back of her pickup truck, I didn't blame the kid. (Yes, I miss my Tennessee life...)

In researching the current compensation for a tooth, I've found that you people are crackers. There is no way my kid is getting up to $10 per tooth. Hell, I'd already decided he was lucky if he got more than that handful of change I dug out of the couch last week when he thought dumping his piggy bank out on was a good idea...

(And yes, I fully planned on using his own money for the tooth fairy crap as I have been the one picking up coins for days.)

But then I came up with a great idea.... I wrote a letter from the tooth fairy to go under his pillow:

Dear Bonus,

I am so proud of you for being such a big boy and loosing your first tooth! Congratulations! The current rate is $1 per tooth, despite what your friends may tell you. Also, your girlfriend who said that 'when you loose your first tooth you get the Barbie you always wanted' was lying.

I have heard that you are trying to save up money right now to replace your bike tire that you flattened with a drill bit "just to see what a flat tire looked like". Considering you haven't been doing the chores your mother requested in order to earn that money back, I've decided to just give the dollar to your mother to help offset the cost of this new tire.

Maybe by the time your next tooth falls out, you will have worked that off and will actually get the dollar yourself. (You know, your mom only got a quarter when she was a kid...)

Best wishes and happy dental health,

The Tooth Fairy



Genius, right?! It's all sorts of parenting gold. Aside from keeping the fantasy going, he's getting a little lesson in the process!

Dorkfish refused to let me do it. He insisted it would 'scar the kid for life' or something.

These people just don't get my humor...

She likes the booooys in the baaaand....

Straight out of The Never-Ending Vacation, my grandmother is here for yet ANOTHER week. This weekend it snowed for the third weekend in a row in a city that rarely sees any of the white stuff. Not only is she insisting that she will never return in any cold season, she's pretty convinced that this might be a sign of the apocalypse. (And she says she's being punished for some bad deeds of which she will not speak.)

However, in the car today, she asked to hear the song I had played yesterday, "Super Freak" by Rick James. Her favorite line is "The kind of girl you don't take home to mother". Not only does she sing the chorus, she giggles at the same time...

Heh.

I'm starting to see a connection here; maybe she IS being punished.

Either way, she's my all-time favorite.

It's all about the magic.

Two days ago, I woke up with an incredible soreness in my gums, behind all my teeth. After consulting Dr. Dorkfish who diagnosed it as eating soup that was too hot the night before, I inspected them in the bathroom mirror. Just a little redness, nothing serious.

The next day, they're worse.

And there were red and white patches.

And I started feeling achy.

(Just to clarify, I've never even had so much as a canker sore in my mouth so this new revelation took me back to a conversation with a friend my freshman year in college which involved a "what does this look like to you" discussion. Poor, dumb, girl....ahem.)

So I call Dorkfish home from work and make him take me and our three year old to the doctor. Deuce had been complaining of an ear ache for three days now, so I figured we'd make it an all-skate.

The doctor looked all inside my mouth and asked me if it hurt to pee.

*blink*

Seriously, did it hurt to pee?! Listen here, Jackass, if it was THAT, I wouldn't be sitting here with my husband AND kid nowwouldI?!

He decided it was a mystery virus. Nothing they can do for it, but come back in five days if it's not better. (Google could have done that for me and the co pay would have been much more reasonable.)

So he sends me home with a prescription for a numbing mouthwash called, "Magic Mouthwash"....

The directions on the bottle say, "Swish and Spit".....

I'm now wondering how much that little bottle would go for on the local college campus?

By the way, Mams keeps calling it "Trench Mouth" which is not at all helping the pain....

There's a short line between 'smart' and 'dumb'.

Thanks to the Great Snow Storm of 2010, mams has stayed an extra week with us. She wasn't exactly pleased with this plan, but never the less, she's here. This weekend, they are predicting MORE SNOW! FREEZING RAIN! AND ICE! To an 84-year-old woman this is like a run in her favorite panty-hose on the way to church... completely unacceptable and a true sin.

Today, I fully planned to rush her home and come back tomorrow in an attempt to please her (so there would be a little hope of her returning at some point) and to beat the bad weather home. After all, the only way I'm getting trapped in a snow storm is if Jim Cantore is keeping me warm...heh.

Ahem.

So, she broke down and decided to stay another week with us. As a thank you, I drove her back to the mall (for the second day in a row) to purchase a skirt she had seen on clearance yesterday. F0r those of you who don't know me well, a pointless trip to the mall is about as close to torture as I can imagine. However, when your grandmother offers to stay, you'd drive her to the moon to keep her happy. (But I may have considered leaving her when she criticized the size of my rear in a pair of jeans.)

When we got back, she began feverishly cleaning the house in an attempt to get it all 'tidied up before Dorkfish gets home' because apparently, 'a man likes his home neat and clean when he gets home'...

*blink, blink*

Yeah, there might be a little bit of a generational gap there...

But I will hand it to her, the place is pretty spotless. Although when I called her a smartass for making fun of my lack of cleaning abilities, she said, "If I was a smartass, I'd be sitting in there watching TV. It looks like I'm a dumbass to me."

(smartass)

There's just no pleasing some people...

In only the second time since I've lived here in North Carolina, we got a decent-sized snow storm. It wasn't quite the snopocolypse that everyone on twitter was forecasting, but the inch of ice made the seven inches of snow a bit more treacherous.

I was pretty excited as this forced my grandmother to stay another week. She, on the other hand, was none too pleased to be stuck here. Despite my attempts to make her stay as comfortable as possible, she's already hitting up my friends of a ride back to Tennessee. I'm kind of at a loss as to how to please her... We moved the TV into her room (along with the children that watch it), I've only let her cook meals that she's insisted upon making, (yes, she DID insist. It's the sink that she's chained to, not the stove), she's called all her old friends who she can't call from home since it's long distance from her house and she's even had time to work on her medical degree, (she's diagnosed my oldest son with ADD and my dog with diabetes.)

Overall, I would have assumed it was a great trip! That was until we had this morning's conversation as she was unloading the dishwasher and I was sipping my coffee:

Mams: "There must be a reason I'm stuck here because I've been praying for the Lord to find me a way out of here for days now and he's just not doing it."

Me: "You're praying to go home?! Is it really that bad here?"

Mams: "Well, it's one of the things I pray for. You know, world peace and do get back to Knoxville."

*sigh*

Look out Erma Bombeck! Here comes Mams...

Last Saturday, I went on my epic journey to bring my grandmother here to visit for a week. She was chomping at the bit to get home by Tuesday. Fortunately, Mother Nature had other plans and dumped five inches of snow and an inch of ice on our little town today. Mams, though not pleased, decided it was in everyone's best interest if we didn't go skidding of the side of a mountain driving back to Tennessee. (It was surprisingly difficult for her to agree to this...)

In my best 'I'm-sorry-to-disappoint-you' tone, I agreed that she should probably stay another week. Not only is she the best baby sitter, she's been cooking, cleaning and ironing and, AND! only drinks one beer at night. (It's the cheap beer at that!) But little does she know, I've been recording some of her best quotes all week just for you.

Let's just say that it's a good thing she can't "call online" in Knoxville...

Mams: "You know, I never worried about Papaw when he was at work. Sure, there were plenty of women who would have taken him in a heartbeat, but I knew he was good."

Me: "Yeah, I never worry about Dorkfish either."

Mams: "You think he's a good boy?"

Me: "Well, yes. I'm pretty sure he's not leaving me."

Mams: "Maybe he just hasn't found the right one yet."

.......

Me: "Mams, are you warm enough at night here?"

Mams: "Well, sure, honey. I have an African in there keeping me warm."

Me: "An African? Don't you mean an afghan?"

Mams: "Well, there's one of those in there too."

.......

Deuce: "Mams, can you fwoat in outer pace?"

Mams: "Well why are you asking me that? I don't fart anywhere. Ladies just don't do that."

.......

"Your friends sure were nice, but I was just out of place. They're all buying cars and things and I'm at an age I don't even put things in lay-away."

......

"I'm sure going to try and see that model train exhibit again next year. Well, if I'm living and there's a parking space."

......

And this was just her first week here....

Bad Math

Yesterday morning, I woke up with the great idea to get my grandmother over here for a week. I haven't seen her since Christmas and she complains DAILY that the boys will grow up and never know her/the neighbors see her boys more than she does/we never call anymore and every time she goes a day without a phone call she just KNOWS it's because something bad happened and I don't want her to know. (Your pick.)

So I called my dad in an attempt to sweet-talk him into meeting me in Asheville so I didn't have to make the seven-hour drive back to Knoxville.

He had to work.

Pfft.

So I told Dorkfish, "I'm just going to drive over there, spend the night and bring her back with me tomorrow. I'll be fine. It's just fourteen hours, round trip, no biggie. I know you're going to worry, but I promise it's not a big deal."

Secretly, I'm practically giddy over the thought of spending that much time in silence.

Before I could assemble my playlist in my head, Dorkfish says, "That's fine. Just take the boys with you."

OH.

NO.

HE.

DIDN'T.

(Ohyeshedid.)

Apparently, his new promotion at "The Harris" from Safety to Performance means that he has a lot of homework to do. I can only assume he's now having to make sure the bag boys no longer put the beer on top of the eggs.

Sigh.

So I loaded the boys up and drove fourteen hours to spend twelve in Knoxville. Twelve. TWELVE.

This means that in a twenty-seven hour period, I spent fourteen in a car with a six year old and a three year old.

This? This is a nomination for sainthood.

The real shock was that I came home to a spotless house, clean sheets, flowers, dinner cooking, candles burning and was told to go take a hot bath and relax. I haven't figured out what he did wrong in those twenty-seven hours, but it might be worth it.

However, my grandmother saying, "I don't know what he did either, but you're going to be paying for this later," made the entire trip worthwhile. Heh.