I inherited bushy eyebrows from my father. I somehow managed to make it through all of high school and part of college before realizing I could do something about my eyebrows.

There are many things wrong with this photo. First? The hair. Second? The cheerleading uniform. (Gold is not flattering on ANYONE. And, yes, I was a cheerleader.) Third? You can tell even from this horribly fuzzy photo I stole from Facebook that my eyebrows led me into rooms.

When I was around seven, my older cousin made me play the Big Bad Wolf in a series of family dramatic productions. Little Red Riding Hood? I was the Big Bad Wolf. The Three Little Pigs? Yep. Wolf. She even inserted a Big Bad Wolf into stories not featuring one, such as Hansel & Gretel. When I protested I'd like to play a sweet, adorable little girl, she told me I was destined to be typecast with those eyebrows.

It's a cruel world.

Once I discovered tweezers, I overplucked my eyebrows for quite some time. This unfortunate event coincided with me gaining weight after recovering from anorexia, which lent me the look of a round-faced eighty-three-year-old woman. I also apparently thought eyebrows were supposed to be the same thickness at each end, like a Cabbage Patch Kid's. Even Barbie had better brows than me.

The last few years have been slightly better, however I do have a tendency to get impatient and overpluck the edges. The problem? Even though I'm tweezing these days, and not to excess (I hope), the brow hairs themselves are still striving for Teen Wolf. I trim them with a button-sewing-kit pair of scissors every few days, but I could probably braid my eyebrows at this point if I left them to their own devices.

According to the Internet, my brows are supposed to be dying down with age. (I have lost the link that told me that. Sorry. But the Internet said it, so it must be true.) Many women spend lots of money to make their eyebrows grow. And yet I find myself wielding scissors every few days to avoid my God-given eyebrows.

 

Not my dad. But looks eerily like him twenty years ago.

Petunia Cookie Dough has an appointment to have a tooth extracted next week. Apparently she's got a cavity down to the root. It's causing her pain when she eats. I'd noticed her sort of turning her head to the side and hacking a lot, and I worried when we were gone for three days at Christmas that she wouldn't eat her hard food and then we'd come home to find an insane muted calico who'd eaten part of the couch and an entire package of dental floss while we were gone.

So I did the responsible cat owner thing and asked the neighbor to come over and give her a little soft food every day.

By the time we returned, Petunia had gained enough weight to notice a difference. In three days, she'd eaten four entire cans of soft cat food. The big ones, not the little ones. And like a vampire, she'd developed a taste for it.

On Monday, I didn't have any more soft cat food. I gave her hard food and sat down to start working. The withdrawal set in immediately. One would've thought Lindsay Lohan was spending time in my living room. She curled up to me, batting me playfully,  purring all the while. Then, when I didn't give in, she stomped off and sat in the kitchen, meowing mournfully for at least a half hour. Every time I got up to do something, she ran over to her bowl and meowed impatiently. I hid the car keys.

FREAK CAT.

Before this weekend, we'd never given her soft food, and she always ate like a really normal cat. The most normal cat we've ever had, actually, because Sybil always begged for soft food and Bella always begged for treats. I thought Petunia didn't have a junkie personality. I thought she was different.

WHAT HAVE I DONE?

I just wanted her to have food while her tooth was hurting! I didn't realize soft cat food has the same active ingredients as Red Bull, cigarettes and Chipotle all wrapped up in one tin. Now I'm going to have to check her in to Cat Rehab. Beloved said we should just stop cold turkey, but her tooth does still hurt and also? I am home all day now working, which means I have to watch little Miss Kitty LiLo cut herself, trying to get my attention. All for a little mushy chicken.

Okay, here's the other reason I love my new job: The Holiday Hot Mess Photo Contest. It was birthed from a discussion of holiday visitors and OH THE COATS AND THE BOOTS AND THE PRESENTS AND THE TISSUE PAPER.

AND THE PACKING PEANUTS.

AND THE CARDBOARD.

AND THOSE LITTLE TWIST TIES.

I hate the little twist ties with the force of a thousand suns.

The only good part about all this crap is that it's funny! Who doesn't love a photo like this?

 

Just throw your coat anywhere.

Seriously, if you don't think that's funny, then your heart is too sizes too small.

This post is inspired by Maria Niles' post on BlogHer.

1) I meant to be more present. I try, really I do, to always be listening when someone is talking to me. Sometimes, though, something I read or see or want to write about squirrels its way into my head, and no matter how I bat it down it pops up again like a rubber duck. It particularly bothers me when I find myself doing this with friends or family. They've pointed it out, this bad habit of mine, and I'm ashamed of it. So even though I meant to do it in 2009, I'm going to try harder in 2010.

2) I meant to find an agent for my children's book, Bella Eats the Monsters. I wrote it, then Bella died, and after hearing back from a few agents that it wasn't quite there, that monsters were overdone, that it was "cute," I just gave up on it and started my novel. I'm happy with that decision. There is only so much time to write, and I feel more connected to the novel than I did to the children's book. So I'm stowing it for future reference, and perhaps I'll get it published by the time I'm pressuring the little angel to make me a grandmother.

3) I meant to call my parents more often. I have done a better job in the past few weeks, but there were weeks that I went by without talking to my parents. Normally we talk quite a bit, but somehow when things got really bad and busy at work and life just felt so overwhelming, calling home was forgotten. It didn't help that for a year we took long-distance off our home phone, so I had to find and unlock my cell to call home. I'm much more likely to talk for any length of time on a larger phone. Now we have long-distance back, and lo! I dial.

4) I meant to take more photos. We have a digital camera, and there's really no excuse. I wish I'd taken more video, too. I have all the tools. I just forget. Then a whole year has gone by and my daughter looks so different and I worry I'll forget what she looked like making cookies in her little apron. And then I want to cry.

5) I meant to read more. I read quite a few books in 2009, but they were almost all review books. I'm severely curtailing the books I will review in the future. Some of those review books were awesome, but some took away from great fiction. I won't let that happen again. It's easy to let that happen.

Lest I depress myself with this post, here are some things I'm proud that I did in 2009.

• I got a new job with a fabulous media company doing something I love.
• I weathered the death of Bella and brought Petunia Cookie Dough into our lives.
• I had a lot of dates with my hot husband, and we talked about all sorts of things that don't involve housework, children or scheduling.
• I wrote the rough draft of a novel.
• I threw a shower for my very pregnant best friend.
• I went to Disney World on my birthday with my family.
• I attended my first ASJA conference.
• I spoke at BlogHer and Chicks Who Click.
• I published articles at Super Eco and Babble and in Scholastic Parent and Child.
• I started getting together regularly with some writer types to talk shop and drink wine.
• I listened to War and Peace. I liked it.
• I helped Beloved's parents move to a more accommodating location.
• I helped Beloved remodel two closets and a garage in the Transformation of Chateau Travolta (which seems to drag on and on).
• I enjoyed myself quite a bit.

I knew something was fishy the moment she approached me. She NEVER sits on the couch in the morning. She's always running this way and that, muttering "LATE! LATE!" even when she works from home in that stupid leather chair I can't fit into behind her. (I have tried. Nonadjustable arms.)

But she patted the seat beside her, all nice and cooing, and I, like an idiot, walked right into it. She grabbed me and he held open some sort of gauche gym-bag-looking-wannabe-designer-cat-bag thing. He stuffed me in headfirst. I was so totally pissed. HISS.

I will wait until they sleep. Then I will sit on their chests and breathe menacing breaths until they wake up.

Then I will wait for them to fall asleep and DO IT AGAIN.

She drove me to the vet and left me there for five hours. WITH OTHER ANIMALS. I hate other animals.  And she should never leave me like that.

Because maybe. Just maybe? I was a little bit scared.

HISS.

Then the stupid vet said something about "fecal test" and also told me I have a cavity and have to have a tooth extracted AT A LATER DATE. Which means I HAVE TO COME BACK.

But next time ... next time, I will see her coming.

Fuck you.

So the little angel's five-year photos are only eight months late.

 
My new favorite photo.

Our good friend Randy Braley took the photos. He's gotten himself into the lifestyle photo gig, and I plug him only because he is my friend and he does good work. We paid him for his work. I have even forgiven him for my triple chins he has posted on his site.

(I kid. But I got you to look, didn't I?)

 
  Nice work, eh?

This weekend we held The Baby Shower Heard Round the World for my best friend, Stephanie. I was asked to make a diaper cake for the shower. I looked it up online and found I would need 60 diapers rubber-banded together.

 

60 is, um, a lot.

I was supposed to use newborn diapers, but I've heard Steph's husband was 18 pounds when he was born (okay, maybe a little less), so I went with size 1. If you don't want Elmo to show, fold the design up inside.

The next step was to buy 8 yards of wide ribbon and 50 yards of narrow ribbon. I only used the narrow ribbon on the outer edge of each tier, so I totally could've gotten away with probably half the amount of narrow ribbon. I gave the overage to the little angel.

Next, you were supposed to use a baby bottle filled with candy for the center of the top tier, but Stephanie is much fancier than that, so I made a flower thingie.

 

The little angel chose these flowers from the bridal aisle at Hobby Lobby.

So then, you tie these itsy bitsy little bows around the rubber band on the outermost rows and sort of guess as to how many you need for each tier. Finally, hogtie the whole thing together into three tiers.

 

TA DA!!! My crafty magnum opus. This is all I've got.

Finally, when I was stuck in the Milwaukee airport for three years on Thursday, I asked my friend Sandee of Stems Flower Market (and who also sits across from me at work) how to make roses from Costco look pretty. She gave me some good advice.

 

Costco, bitches.

 

Ancient German secret.

 

These roses were so not open when I bought them. Sandee is a genius.

Happy shower, cute pregnant person! Can't wait to meet your baby girl. And neither can a certain redheaded person I happen to know well.

My girls' weekend ROCKED. On every possible level. It was so great.

But it's private. Yes, it's true -- I do occasionally have boundaries. SURPRISE!

So, instead, I give you the house we made out of the cardboard box Steph's glider came in.

 

Note the fence by Beloved and the shape by moi.

 

We got some markers and puffy paints for the occasion. It reminded me of the cat house Blondie and I made with Pa when we were kids.

 

Beloved made special handles for the window out of duct tape.

The little angel immediately began decorating.

 

I contributed an apple tree.

 

And a sun.

 

Cardboard box houses ROCK.

 

As do half-price roses from the grocery store that have miraculously opened while you were gone for the weekend.

I'm off to Lawrence in a few hours to celebrate Steph's pregnancy with two of our three college roommates. The last time we got together sans kids and husbands was in Florida, probably three or four years ago. I can't even remember.

I haven't let myself think about it too much because this week has been so crazy busy, but now that I've completed the tasks that absolutely had to be done today, it's time to hop in the shower and pack and buy a box expensive bottle of fine wine so I can spend a day and two nights remembering what it is like to hang out.

Remember hanging out? It's been a while.

 

 

 

(I know these are blurry. I think they went with our state of mind.)