On Wednesday, I was working late when I got a call from Beloved.

His truck had apparently stopped going VROOM while he was driving the little angel home from technical rehearsal in another suburb.

And it was 11 degrees outside. My two favorite people in the whole world, stuck in the cold with no heater and far enough away to scare me.

I left my laptop on the floor, all the lights on, Petunia staring after me in puzzlement. I was halfway out of town before I realized I really didn't know where I was going. I drove up the highway for twenty minutes before I saw their weak hazard lights barely flashing on the side of the road, a dying firefly. I was picturing the little angel inside wearing her ballet tights and crying, freezing. I couldn't get turned around to the other side of the highway fast enough. 

When I pulled up behind them, the battery was so dead it kept tripping off the auto-theft protection and locking the doors, so Beloved had to pull the little angel out of the truck on the driver's side as thoughtless cars whipped past at 60 miles per hour just feet from their bodies. She was wrapped in the blanket we'd bought to give to charity that Beloved had in his back seat. She wasn't wearing tights -- she was dressed in jeans and boots -- but she was freezing, if cheerful. We all climbed into my warm car and waited for two hours for the tow truck to arrive.

It was the alternator. It's fixed now, $427 later. All that matters is that my people are warm.

The sound was deafening in the Happy Joe's party room. Twelvechildren ranging in age from just over one to a college freshman weretaking turns sitting on a game-ticket-purchased whoopee cushion andhowling with laughter. We'd just come off an hour of bumper bowling,and the kids could barely contain themselves after being stuffed fortwo days straight with myriad cookies and other sweets while taking over a three-bedroom condo also occupied by 14 adults.

As I passed my one of my seven brothers-in-law to refill my large soda, he gesturedto the kids chanting each other's names as they passed the whoopeecushion.

"Just think, Rita," he said, laughing, "If you were the Duggars, all these kids would be seven short of your nuclear family."

I looked back at the trashed party room, the piles of plastic crap,the discarded utensils and wadded up, pizza-sauced napkins, and imaginedmy life if I had 19 kids.

Then I laughed my mother-of-an-only-child-for-sanity-purposes ass off and went to refill my glass, knowing I'd made the right choice for me.

More power to you, huge families. I enjoyed my huge extended family this weekend. I adore every one of them, and when I hugged all my nieces and nephews goodbye, I almost felt like crying, I love them so much. But now, back at home, I treasure the quiet and the calm. I am lucky, lucky, lucky to have access to both worlds.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Here's hoping you had a lovely time with your families and your digestive tracts recover nicely.

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Help your child reconnect with make believe on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

"Her face looks like cookie dough," she said, holding her fingers out to the cat who had her own room in the shelter. "If she were mine, I'd name her Cookie Dough."

I'd already checked and found she was declawed. I was hopeful. The little angel hadn't gravitated toward any cat in three shelters and five hours since Bella passed away.  "This could be your cat," I said.

And so we adopted Petunia Cookie Dough, who came to live with us. She now sleeps at our feet in our bed, sits with us while we read books at night to the little angel, sprawls on the kitchen floor while we eat, never more than five feet away from the closest family member.

She is a lap cat. A lover. A sweetheart. And if we hadn't adopted her, she would be dead by now.

We adopted her from a kill shelter when she had been there for nine months. That was in July-ish. She would've been dead by now if we hadn't brought her home.

She is one of the sweetest cats I have ever known.

And sometimes, when I look at her late at night, I realize that she knows that we saved her.

She knows she is home.

You might think I'm writing this post about Sister Little because she wrote such nice things about me yesterday.  I can understand why you'd think that. Tit for tat, and all that, except that Blondie and I don't have that kind of a relationship.  She can do a million nice things for me, and I will just laugh and ignore her, and vice versa.  In fact, I have had this post half-written for about six months now, ever since she moved back to Iowa from Chicago and set up shop in Farmhouse Villa, but I was afraid if I wrote it then, she would think I was just trying to pump her up, and that would only serve to piss her off. And really, you don't want to piss my sister off. She can be something of a hellcat.

No, I write this now when she's in a good place and can appreciate it for what it is:  a love letter of sorts.

There's this book I've been reading the little angel about a mouse named Sheila Rae and her little sister, Louise.  Sheila Rae is fearless, and her sister Louise spends a lot of time watching her.  Then one day, fearless Sheila Rae takes a new way home.  Louise trails behind her, out of sight. After a while, Sheila Rae realizes she is lost, completely lost, and she sits down and cries.  Louise pops out from behind a bush and tells Sheila Rae not to worry, because Louise knows the way home.  When they get home, they are both fearless.  That's kind of how I feel about Sister Little.

Growing up, I know Blondie watched me to see how I did things.  Once she got to high school, she pretty much disregarded them, and by college we were barely speaking.  But she calls me a lot for professional advice, and we spent a lot of time together on the phone when she first moved to Chicago and again when she and Rock Star Boyfriend broke up.  Though we've had our ups and downs, we've counted on each other as a sounding board and emotional propper-upper.

As I started working on the book, though, I went to Blondie for professional advice of my own, for I think the first time.  My sister has been in the publishing industry for years.  I envy her this -- I listened to the world when they told me getting a degree in English would get me nowhere, so my undergraduate degree is in communications studies, and it took me five years after college before I realized I HAD TO HAVE that writing degree and went back for a master's.  My fearless little sis got the English degree and accepted no job other than those in the publishing field.  She's currently looking for a new one, and I applaud her singular vision, especially considering she's in Iowa.  It's rough out there for an editor, don't I know it.  It took me more than ten years of working in public relations, advertising and product management to admit DAMMIT I WANT TO BE AN EDITOR and got a job as an editorial manager.   My sister -- straight to the point.

She walked me through how book proposals are viewed on the other side.  She talked me off the ledge when I didn't hear back, or I got rejected.  She lectured me on how the publishing world works, and she cheered accomplishments as small as a signed rejection letter rather than a mimeographed (and I am not kidding about that) half-sheet labeled "Dear Author," as painful to receive as a box checked "no" on the eighth grade "Do you like Rita?" note passed by a boy in study hall.

It's hard to find a new job. It's hard to move, to uproot your entire life, especially a life you shared for years with a guy.  Blondie and Rock Star Boyfriend were together longer than many of my married friends have been with their husbands.  She suffered an emotional divorce when they broke up.  There were times I worried she wouldn't come back from it, but she did.  She took up building dollhouses and growing orchids.  She thrived in her job. She made the decision to move back to Iowa so we could all be closer.  She has a whole house now, with a lawn to mow and everything, which is something I don't know I'd have the balls to take on alone. She's finding a new editorial job in a tough job market.  And she's returned to our tiny hometown as an adult and is making an adult identity for herself there -- again, something I'm not sure I would be able to do.  Louise is walking backwards with her eyes closed and stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, and Sheila Rae is so very impressed.

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Before you do your weekend shopping, read my review of Gorgeously Green on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews.

The little angel was fine, FINE when my beloved dropped her off at The Emerald City yesterday.  SHE WAS FINE.  "Goodbye, Daddy!" she chirped.  "Give me my kiss first!  One kiss only!"

Based on her success yesterday, I decided to try again, after the horrible experience on Wednesday morning when I stayed there for 45 minutes, watching her grow increasingly snot-covered and agitated, clinging to me with her little body and howling, "NO, MOMMY, DON'T LEAVE!! DON'T LEAVE!!!"  After I finally ripped her death grip from my neck, set her down and walked out the door, she wailed with the pain of a dying animal and threw her body against the door, screaming, "I WANT MY MOOOOMMMMYYY!!"

And of course, I squatted outside the door below the window so she couldn't see me and cried all my mascara off for twenty minutes until the crying subsided a bit.

I called later to hear that she had blown herself out and was resting quietly, as though she'd in fact had a full-scale nervous breakdown. 

BUT, as I am a glutton for punishment, I thought that since my beloved had a completely different experience yesterday that maybe, MAYBE I could pull it off this morning.

I was so wrong.

My friend K. found me again hunched under the glass outside the door, rocking in the fetal position and listening to the howls and thuds of her 32 pounds of red-haired fury hitting the door.   I begged her to come back out after dropping off J. and tell me how the little angel was doing.  By the time she came back out, the little angel was in her old teacher Miss L's arms and sucking her Nuby cup like it contained fine scotch.

I don't know why me. K's theory is that she knows it bothers me more than it does my beloved.  Of course, it's probably just that she really does love me best.  Or because I have ovaries.  Or because she knows that I cried so hard after Grey's Anatomy last night that my sister actually asked me if I was pregnant.  The little angel woke up at 4 a.m. after two nights of sleeping all the way through and begged to be taken to the couch. While I was cuddling with her, I had a dream that I went back to college and lost her in a fraternity house, then after searching for hours I opened a door and found her, terrified and covered in her own vomit.  I think the guilt thing combined with the recent illness are totally doing a number on me.

GAH. I'm so glad it's Friday.

According to Wikipedia (which is totally updated by whoever, but it did seem to know first that Anna Nicole Smith had died), the phrase "shooting the messenger" originated with Sophocles in Antigone.  Of course, from "Antingone" we also get "antagonize," which is another thing I am sometimes good at.

So anyway, I was having a bit of a tiff with Ma and Pa this week over some hurt feelings and misunderstandings when Blondie threw herself into the fray.  Now, I did ask her to spare herself, but when she did, with the best of intentions, soldier on, I threw her under the bus.  I shot the messenger.

And now I feel sort of bad.

Why is it that no matter how old you get, you always act like an imbecile with your own family?  WHY WHY WHY?

Anyway.  I did get the photo disk back from vacation. I am inexplicably red-faced, but my beloved does not look like he became a giant marshmellow, which is often how he looks at high altitudes.  He is still hot.  I look horrible. But my vanity will not stop me from showing you the photo taken shortly after I won the hula-hoop contest at the Whale's Tail.  Photos coming soon.

Carry on.

I was going to write today all about my hot date on Saturday.  Ma and Pa came to stay with the little angel while my beloved and I Pricelined a hotel on the Plaza and went to dinner and Four! Bars!  Three! Cover! Charges!  Six! Drinks! In! One! Night!  This sort of frivolity has not been had in a long time.  It was glorious and adult and very fun. 

We arrived home, a wee bit hungover, about 10:30.  "You didn't say anything about the potty," my mom said.  "I hope we did it right."

Me:  "WHAT?"

Ma:  "Oh, yeah, she said she had to use the potty last night, and she peed in it."

WTF?  This from the kid who screamed "NO POTTY!  There is no potty ANY MORE!" last week.

Huh.

Not five minutes after we got home, she said she wanted to use it again.  She sat there so long I finally left her to go look at My Yahoo.  When I came back, she has not only peed in her little potty but also pooped.  I stood there with hungover shock on my face (because, though I was proud, a little pile of poop just waiting for me to clean it up was not really my idea of a good time on Saturday morning).  I thought to myself, hmmm.  Maybe I need to go on dates more often.  Maybe next time I leave her overnight, she'll learn to mop floors or maybe drive.

She hasn't done it since, and she's still wearing the diapers.  I know her, she can be a bit cagey with the new skills.  It was a big weekend, though, and my liver has superseded all other organs for blood supply, so I have nothing else to say.  Except that in a few days, I'll be headed to San Jose for BlogHer!  WHEE!  So my liver can HATE ME AGAIN.

I composed an entire post about my family's latest medical trauma while waiting for my sister to get a CT of her head on Friday.  I was in Chicago, where she lives. Of course, between that time and now, there have been a lot of wardrobe and suitcase changes, and I lost the whole thing. Lately she's been hearing her heartbeat in her ear, a swooshing noise. This is called pulsatile tinnitus.  Kind of like ringing in the ears, but swooshing instead.  Apparently this can be caused by nothing serious, or it can be caused by myriad horrid things too scary to write about (because if I write about them, it might give them secret powers).

Anyway, she was so nervous about the test that she forgot some important things, such as the doctor's order for the test.  We finally got it figured out, after hearing a story about the receptionist Matthew's St. Patrick's Day incident with his expensive Italian cell phone.  (Apparently he'd been drunk on margaritas and threw it at someone after only six days of ownership.  It was shattering to him to lose it. It was also shattering to the phone.)

In order to do the scan, they had to pump some sort of dye, probably radioactive, into her blood. They wouldn't let me go back there with her.  They claimed it was due to the radioactiveness of it all.  I think they just really don't like visitors in the medical world. Anyone care to comment on that?  Visitors just seem like more people to freak out and/or hold down. I could be wrong.

Sister Little said the dye made her super hot, like she was breathing fire.  It also gave her the disconcerting sensation that she was peeing.  They warned her this would happened and reassured her that though she would think she was peeing, she was not really peeing.  I guess she did well. The nurse told her afterward that about some women like the peeing sensation so much they want to do it again (gah) and some people are so freaked out they jump up and flee from the room, screaming, and have to be hunted down.

After all this, they burned her head images to a CD (which took, like, so much longer than it takes me to burn a CD, even when I have to use iTunes).  I asked her if we could play it in her car.  I wonder what it would sound like. Probably The Cure, or maybe the end of a Prince song.  She said no, she didn't really want to hear her brain on radioactive dye. I thought the little angel might like it. Touche.

So now we wait four business days to find out if she has any aneurysms.  It's sort of scary, so we're both trying not to think about it.  I told the mother of one of my childhood friends (I was also in Chicago this weekend - we all were - for a baby shower of yet another childhood friend) about the whole thing, this woman who has known me almost my entire life, and she said, "Don't invite trouble."  This particular woman has been a widow for at least ten years and has a daughter, one of my best friends, who had meningitis to the point where half her body was paralyzed and had to relearn to walk, was bitten by a brown recluse spider and has always lived on the edge.  Her other daughter, the organizer of the shower, had many medical problems of her own.  So I figured if anyone knew what she was talking about, M. did.  And so, I'm going to try really hard not to invite trouble where there currently isn't any.  At least not any bona fide documented trouble.

So there.