Sorry, went into hiding after the last tattoo.  I was so busy admiring it’s beauty that I forgot about the world that lives on my computer.

Ok that is complete bull but it makes me feel better so I’m going to go with it.  I really have nothing constructive to post at this time so I’m just going to do a bunch of meaningless little update things.

The lizard returneth:  My arm tattoo healed beautifully, but my leg has taken on that lizard quality.  Not to mention the fuzzy kitten quality.  It’s still to raw to shave even though I’m starting to think that shaving it might rid it of some of it’s lizardness.  It itches like hell too, but as Toaist once said, I’m not sure if it’s because of the tattoo or the hair growing in on my leg.  My husband has taken to petting my leg when we are sitting next to each other while saying “good kitty.”  F**king smart ass.

Dumb move of the day:  My dad and my step mother know that the quickest way to my heart is by giving me the gift of books.  Twice a year I receive a Barnes & Noble gift card; Christmas and my birthday (luckily they are six months apart from each other) for $250 a pop.  These tend to last until the next fix arrives, sometimes there is a gap if I don’t pace myself but for the most part I’m good.  Usually I go online and buy the books that I have heard about or noticed from random browsing.  This keeps me from going overboard.  Today I decided that I needed to go to the actual store for my fix.  Upon arriving at the B&N, I was putting my keys and phone back in my purse and discovered…no wallet.  I got really freakin lucky because I was speeding the whole ten miles from my home to the store.  Would have been bad if I had been busted.  I don’t think any amount of cleavage would have gotten me out of that one.  Luckily my husband had still been home when I left and had to kind of go the direction of the area that I was in in order to get to his job.  He brought me my wallet, and I was humbled on my drive home.  It also helps that I had books with me, these tend to tame the savage beast.  For my husbands efforts, I bought a book for him.

Why it’s good that my husband works nights, at least for one week of every month:  Due to the surprise arrival of the crimson tide, I have absolutely no interest in real food.  The nice people at Target are aware of this too since my shopping cart was filled with toilet paper, female hygiene products, chocolate, puffy Cheetos, chocolate and more chocolate.  I have absolutely no interest in making any of the nice healthy things that I bought at the grocery store last week and will instead enjoy my dinner of Cheetos and chocolate.  If my husband were here, I can assure you that he would be fending for himself this week and also hiding from me in another room.

Red, white and Blues:  Every year I go to a parade and fireworks show with my girlfriend and her family.  It’s always fun because who doesn’t love a good local parade?  The fireworks show this year was absolutely spectacular.  My husband was with me and I was having a good time.  Now, like I said it was my girlfriend and her family.  I turned around at one point to ask my girlfriends sister a question (she is also pregnant, actually four days apart from my girlfriend) and noticed that my ex and his wife were also there.  There is a very long story involved with why he was there and I promise that one day I will write about it, but this night was awkward and suddenly very uncomfortable for me and my husband.  My husband mostly because he wanted to bring physical harm upon my ex.  That night shook me up so badly that I didn’t want to go to my girlfriends family party the next day (the fourth) because I was afraid that it would happen again, only my ex wouldn’t be there with me.  My girlfriend was too tired and too pregnant to  keep insisting , and I ended up sitting at home all night watching fireworks from my balcony.

A book a day:  Ok, it wasn’t a book a day but I did manage to read four within a week.  It was mostly Chick lit so I therefore have nothing to really recommend unless you like this kind of thing.  In no particular order:

1. This Charming Man by Marian Keyes:  I was able to relate to this book.  It’s basically about four women who were all involved with the same man.  I don’t want to blow the whole thing, but it involves domestic violence.  It was really good and I was kind of (ok, remember it’s the week of cheetos and chocolate) sad.  I was crying at the end, but that was because it was a nice tidy ending.  Marian Keyes is one of my favorite authors.  She has the right amount of humor and seriousness.  I highly recommend this book and for that matter all of her books.
2. The Beach House by Jane Green:  She is also one of my favorite authors.  This book is about a woman who opens her house to a group of people for the summer.  I must really have an issue with summerzing books because I can’t think of a way to describe this book without blowing the plot and the ending.  Regardless, it was a good book.  I had a hard time putting it down, but at times I had a hard time picking it up too.  It was a little slow and hard to read at times. 
3. Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk:  Um yeah, it’s about porn basically.  There isn’t any real sex, but it’s about a porn queen who is ready to retire so she sets up a 600 guy gang bang.  You don’t actually read about the sex acts, it’s more about a few of the guys who are awaiting their turn.  Keeping in mind that this is the guy who wrote Fight Club, it was a good book.  Weird as hell, but good.  I managed to read this one in about a day.  It was light and had short chapters.  If you can handle weird and at times a little bit graphic, then this is a good book.
4. Don’t Hex with Texas by Shanna Swendson:  I’m really ashamed of this one.  I loved it, but it is so obviously Chick Lit that I’m a little bit embarrassed.  It’s book four of a series, and it’s predictable and mushy.  Yet despite all of it’s flaws, I love it.  These are easy to follow and quick to read.  Good for vacation reading.

I just started reading Stori Telling by Tori Spelling and I’m already enjoying it.  I have been a fan of Tori Spelling for awhile.  She tends to be such a bad actor that I love her.  I watch her show on Oxygen because I genuinely like her and I think when someone has their own reality show then it should be watched.  I do tend to ignore what I see in tabloids about her, but how do you ignore anything that has the name Spelling involved in it?

I crack myself up with that title.  It seemed so clever in my mind, but when I see it in print I’m not so sure. 

I’m home from getting the new tattoo, and my leg hurts like hell.  I don’t know what is going on that this one hurt so badly, but I kinda want to cut my leg off at the knee.  On the bright side though, it looks fucking awesome! 

The original tattoo was done when I was 18 and a friend had just passed away from Leukemia.  I had also just found out that my parents were getting divorced and I was angry, really angry.  Neither parent wanted me to get the tattoo, but I did it anyway.  Did I mention that I was angry?  Fast forward twelve years later and while my mom is mentioning that out of all of my tattoos only the first one still makes her angry.  I told her the next time I had enough money that I would gladly go and get it covered up.  I walked out of that house with a check for $200 to go and get the ugly tattoo covered up. 

When I went to the tattoo shop to talk to my guy (yup, I have a guy now) I told him that I thought maybe a flower would work.  Flowers tend to have enough detail to cover up writing, and writing is what I had.  I left him on Saturday evening to draw up something, with the promise that I would be back on Monday afternoon (the shop is closed on Sunday’s). 

Well without further ado, I present you with the before and after:

I took the first picture, in case you couldn’t tell.  My tattoo guy took the second picture.  I did declare my love for him when I saw what he did.  He made a face like it’s something he hears all the time.  The whole thing hurts like hell.  Even now, two hours after it’s done, my leg is still throbbing.  I can’t believe how much this tattoo hurt.  The outline hurt, the coloring in hurt…it just hurt like hell.   I was a trooper though, I didn’t whine about it once.  I’m not really dumb enough to whine about it since I volunteered to have this done to me, not once but twice. 

I mean look at that, you can’t see any remnants of the original.  How cool is that?  Trust me you can’t see it when your live and in person either.  I’m just so glad that I’m never going to have to look at that ugly tattoo ever again.  I love, love, love my new tattoo(s). 

I guess I can safely say that with two new tattoos within one week of each other, I’m definately back to my old self again. 

Twelve years ago, I made a mistake.  I got a tattoo that I shouldn’t have gotten.  I got it to piss my mother and father off.  They had just told me that they were getting divorce, and while I was relieved I was also angry as hell at both of them.  So when I found a tattoo shop in another county where you only had to be 18 to get tattooed, I did it.  It got the reaction that I had been hoping for, they were pissed.  My mom was so mad that she didn’t talk to me for like a month. 

My mom saw my new tattoo the other day.  She doesn’t love it, but she doesn’t hate it either.  She makes the mistake of taking my tattoos personally.  She thinks that it’s about her when it so clearly isn’t.  I love her to death, but for the love of all that is good and holy, it’s not about her.  I seem to have strayed from my initial topic.  As I was saying, she saw the new tattoo and doesn’t hate it.  We started talking about all my tattoos and she told me that the one on my leg is the one that pisses her off the most.  Ok fine, I can understand that.  Hell, I regretted that one about 2 years after I got it.  I started wearing jeans in the hottest of weather and when I had to dress up I would pick long dresses so that no one would see that ugly ass, jail house looking tattoo. 

When I told her that the next time I came into $200 or more, I would happily cover that one up.  Here’s the part that still shocks me, she wrote me a check for $200.  She then proceeded to push me out the door so that I could go to the shop and have the guy draw something up for me, while she was telling me that if it went over to tell her so that she could write me another check for the difference.  Well, when someone is making that kind of offer to help you get rid of a source of tension from twelve years ago, you do it. 

I must admit that the guys in the shop looked at me a little funny when I walked back in their doors less than a week after getting a tattoo.  But they seem totally willing to take my money in exchange for giving me another tattoo.  The guy looked at my birthday one which seems to be taking on a bit of a lizard quality, but healing nicely anyway, aside from the itchiness taking over. 

So yeah, lucky girl will have two new tattoos in less than a weeks time.  Don’t worry (as if you guys would) I’ll post pictures…as soon as I figure out how the hell I’m supposed to take a picture of my own leg…

For the record, I’m working on my six words tag.  I find it difficult to define myself and my life in six words.  Tattoos on the other hand, easy.  I just wanted it to be known, that I’m not ignoring the tag that Toaist threw at me, I’m just having issues with it.

I’m turning 30 in a little less than a week now.  I’m not going to go on and on about how hard it’s been for me, because let’s face it, my problems are petty when compared to the problems of others.  Let me just say, that I would be much happier if this was 31 instead of 30 because at least then I would be over this daunting hump.

Anyway, my husband is a good guy who listens to me when I really wish he wouldn’t.

My sister in law (his sister) also turned 30 this year, back in February.  Her husband had thrown her a surprise party for this occasion.  I was jealous because the last time I had a birthday party I think I was turning one or two.  My birthday is at the beginning of summer when people tend to go out of town for vacations, so my friends were usually gone and there was no party to be had.  I’m also an only child so I never really knew what I was missing until I went to friends birthday parties.  It sucked a little to realize that I didn’t get to have something like that, but at the same time I was never prepared to have that much attention thrust upon me so I was thankful that I never had a party.  The point is though, that I told my husband that I was jealous. 

Back when we found out that my brother in law was throwing a party for my sister in law, the green eyed monster game out for a visit.  I wanted a party too dammit.  I’m turning 30, why should she have everything?  I should have mentioned that I would have liked to have been clued in on these details, because my husband managed to throw together a surprise party.  Damn him. 

Since my husband started his new job, I kind of stopped wondering about what was going on.  He had plausible excuses for everything.  He asked about my favorite colors (weird) but had a good reason for why he was doing so.  My girlfriend who is getting married a week from Friday called him at one point and left a message.  My wonderful husband who thought he had nothing to hide from me, was listening to his voice-mail messages on his speaker phone.  I heard the familiar phone number being recited by the voice-mail woman and then my girlfriends distinctive voice saying hello to my husband.  He immediately deleted the message without listening to it.  When I asked what she wanted, he looked at me and asked me how he should know.  I spent two hours saying he might know if he had listened to the message.  He finally called her back in front of me and told me it was because of the wedding, she hadn’t received our RSVP yet and wanted to know if we would be at the wedding.  Weird that she would call him instead of me, but we had gotten new cell phone numbers and maybe I transposed whose number was whose when I sent an email stating that we got new numbers.  Plausible. 

My hair dresser was determined to get me into the salon to get my hair cut and colored before Father’s Day.  Weird.  My mom was insistent that I come over on Father’s Day because my husband was working and her husband would be spending the day at a baseball card show.  Neither of these woman would relent in my wanting to get together on a different day.  I’m now incredibly grateful to my hairdresser, apparently she knew the shame I would feel at being photographed with about 2 inches of growth showing. 

What gave it away was seeing my girlfriend and her fiancee walking into the place where the party was being held.  She saw me, I saw her and she ran away from me.  Curious.  I then started to look at the cars in the parking lot, and asked my mom why my in laws van was there, and why my other girlfriends truck was there.  At that point I knew for certain what was going on.  My mom had to drag me into the building.  I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole life, and this includes the time that I told my psychology teacher that I had to go to the bathroom because my tampon was leaking down my leg.

All in all it was sweet and it was nice to have all of my favorite people in one room.  I wish my one girlfriend would have kept her trap shut and not taken it upon herself to complain about my in laws (that is my right, and my right only), but all in all it was nice.  It felt awkward as hell to have that much attention on me, but it was nice to be able to deflect some of it to the father’s in the room. 

I’m also very grateful that the hangover that I acquired from the night of drinking tequila shots the night before decided to take leave and let me have a semi normal day, you know, free of the pounding headaches and queasy-ness. 

Curiosity got the best of me and I ended up calling the friend back.  Wouldn’t you know it, before I even got to say hello she was launching into what mess her life is.  She told me about a car accident that she got into, she went on about how bad her cramps were this month and about how she has managed to go through yet another job.  Of course she never asked how I was feeling or doing or about how my husbands new job was going.  As a matter of fact she never even mentioned me.  She put me on hold 3 times, and when she put me on hold the third time I got annoyed and hung up.  She then called me back and proceeded to attempt to tear me a new one for hanging up, because her phone plan has free incoming but she has to pay for outgoing and why would I hang up when I know this.  Well, I hung up because I basically have the same plan and she had already put me on hold two other times for about 2-3 minutes each time.  I was fed up, pissed off and I really didn’t feel like talking about her anymore and her dysfunctional life.  When she started to sense that the end of the conversation was imminent, she finally laid it on me.  She needed money, do I have any she could borrow?  The answer was most likely the most resounding no that I have ever stated in my entire life of saying no.  She was so shocked (I think) that she hung up on me and I haven’t heard from her since. 

This was on Thursday for the record.  If this friendship is over then I’m not really sure on who’s terms they ended on, but if I’m right and it’s over then at least I can say that I’m done.  I know it’s immature, but caller ID was developed for this reason I think. 

I finally gave up on Stephen King for now.  I have way too many books and I feel like reading things that I know I can get through quickly.  So, I’m bringing on the Chick Lit (Emily Giffin’s new book and Jennifer Weiner’s new book).  I enjoy them and I know I won’t be able to put them down so I should cruise through those quickly enough.

I did pick up a fun little book though called I before E except after C.  It’s basically all about mnemonic devices.  I actually started reading that one today.  So far I’m enjoying it because who couldn’t use a little help remembering stuff?  

My husband is no longer working for the bank.  Now he is working for Diebold.  Basically he will be the guy who is standing outside or wherever trying and hopefully succeeding in fixing the ATM’s.  He felt the need to start a new job because the bank he was working for basically told him that he would never be promoted unless someone quit or died.  There is nothing encouraging about that kind of environment and quite frankly he was getting bored at the bank job.  He was doing the same thing day in and day out, and it was not working with his hands like he enjoys doing. 

I find it a little scary that he will be responsible for fixing a machine that dispenses cash and not because of the money part.  He’s dealt with greater sums of money than what is available in an ATM at any given moment.  No, what bothers me is that when something goes wrong with the computers at home, he freezes and I’m the one who has to fix them.  If it’s technological, it’s my job to fix them around here.  And he’s going to be responsible for fixing an ATM?

 And on another bright note:  my other girlfriend (the stable married one) is pregnant and expecting their second child in October.  I’ve known about this for quite some time now but seeing as how it isn’t me that’s knocked up I have neglected to mention it. 

On Mother’s Day I had sent her a text message to wish her a happy Mother’s Day because, well because I like her.  She had asked me where I was when I was sending the message and I really thought nothing of it.  I told her I was over at my mom’s and we continued to send messages for another couple minutes.  Finally I told her to go enjoy her Mother’s Day and 10 minutes later my mom’s doorbell rang. 

It was my girlfriend who had come over, because according to her it had to be done on Mother’s Day, to ask me if I would be the second child’s Godmother.  Of course I said yes!  It was actually a little funny (to me at least) the way she phrased it.  She said  “I know that you aren’t really religious (kind of true) but would you be the baby’s Godmother?”  Seriously, who can resist that?  So of course for the rest of the day/night I was walking around saying random quotes from the Godfather movies and doing my best female Marlon Brando impersonation. 

My husband recently acquired his license.  No, I am not married to a 16 year old.  Sickos.  And really, living in the suburbs of Chicago you can actually get around quite nicely without a license or a car.  We live down the street from a train station and have our choice of several bus routes to get us around.  Not that I ever use these things.  Hah!  I have my license. 

My husband has epilepsy, and for that reason he wasn’t able to get a license.  He had a doctor that thought that it was a bad idea, then he had another doctor that was just…well, he was a jerk who insisted that my husband was crazy.  The doctor after that changed hospitals before my husband had been going to him for a year, but on the bright side changed his medicine to something different and it worked out quite well.  The doctor my husband goes to now wouldn’t give him permission to get a license until he went a year without seizures. 

So, finally all of the stars aligned and his doctor gave him permission to get a license.  As a wonderful turn of events this all happened around the same time that I had to go and get mine renewed (woo hoo for 10 years without a ticket).  We ended up getting up at the ass crack of dawn one day so that we could be standing in line and the first ones into the hell dimension known as the DMV so that we could get in and out of there as quickly as possible.  There was also the added hope that my husband would be one of the first people that a test instructor would be in a car with and therefor in a better mood than if we had come, say around lunch time after he’s had to deal with maybe a dozen people who really shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a vehicle. 

Let me say that the people who work at the DMV put up with a hell of a lot more in one hour than I think I would be willing to deal with in a lifetime.  At 8:30 on a Thursday morning a clerk was already being berated by a man who didn’t have everything he needed in order to renew his license.  As if his being unprepared is somehow her fault.  As far as I could tell she was not his wife nor his mother, and since this man was all grown up I think it was most likely his responsibility to read the letter he got in the mail telling him what he would need in order to renew his license.  Instead he blamed the clerk.  Who then had the job of helping my husband while I was with the clerk next to the poor woman who was getting her head chewed off by this asshat. 

So long story short (yeah I know, too late), these kind and wonderful people gave my husband permission to drive.  Now, I’ve been the driver the whole time my husband and I have been together.  I drove everywhere.  I could not go out with my husband and have a drink with dinner because I would have to drive us home.  If we went to a party, I couldn’t drink.  I realize that my sole focus is drinking and it makes me sound like some kind of raving alchoholic, but I’m not, I was just deprived and restricted to drinking in my own home and since my husband doesn’t drink it makes for a kind of lonely drinking existence.  My husband was a passenger seat driver, and I think a lot of my road rage came from him trying to tell me how to drive when he wasn’t the one behind the wheel and dealing with the idiots day in and day out.  But now he knows. 

Now he knows why I would get so angry.  Now he knows why I always wanted to drink.  Now I’m the one sitting in the passenger seat.  And I kind of like it.  Actually, more than kind of, I love the freaking freedom that comes with not being the one who has to drive all the time.  I get to talk on my phone and not have to drop it because some idiot cut me off.  I can check my text messages when they come in instead of an hour later when I finally remember that I got one while I was driving.  I can read the mail if I want to.  Or I can just look out the window and take in the sights and notice things that I didn’t get to notice before because I was too busy staring at the car in front of me hoping that it wouldn’t slam on it’s brakes for no reason whatsoever.  I let him drive everywhere now, just because I can.  I really do think that this will help me to love driving again, because I was really starting to hate it for a little while there.  And if it doesn’t help me to love driving again, at least I know that I’ll be able to have that margarita with dinner after all. 

I grew up with hounds, as in dogs.  We had a beagle named Tippi and a basset named Tyler.  That beagle was sweet as hell, but the basset would rip your face off if given the chance.

Anyway, I can’t remember what time of year it was but it sticks in my mind that it was during spring/summer. 

Our laundry room was in our basement.  It wasn’t a finished basement so it was pretty cold; a cement floor, a pantry leading down the stairs where we kept our canned foods and boxed foods and of course the sublevel window.  This was also the place where crap landed.  Which is most likely why this happend.

My mom was going downstairs one day to do a load of laundry, and something leapt across her field of vision.  She screamed, I heard it very clearly, dropped the laundry basket and came running back up the stairs screaming “There’s an elephant down there!”  (There was also some very bad lighting)  I laugh hysterically now, because what she was screaming was completely ridicilous.  Seriously, wouldn’t a household of three people and two dogs notice if an elephant snuck down to the basement?  I like to think that we would have noticed.

What we wouldn’t notice though, were squirrels.  This was discovered after my very panicked mother called my father at work and demanded that he come home right now.  He came home, went down to the basement and discovered that there were no elephants, but there were squirrels.  After the discovery came the two hour long discussion about how to get the squirrels out of the basement.  I was young enough to ask why we had to do that.  Why couldn’t we just keep them?  My parents assured me that we were not in fact running a squirrel motel and that if clean clothes and a steady supply of macaroni and cheese (to which I was and still am addicted to) were going to continue to happen, then we had to somehow remove the squirrels. 

Enter the hounds.  Who were not trained to be houndlike.  They were taught to sit by the kid at the dinner table and she would definately drop stuff down to them when she encountered something she didn’t like to eat.  In other words, hunting was not in their canine vocabulary.  But my dad was convinced that we he could drag lure the dogs down to the basement and their natural instincts as hounds would kick in.  Hah!  You have to keep in mind that we lived in the suburbs.  We had trees and a garden in our backyard.  Squirrels and rabbits were run of the mill.  I think that most of the time the squirrels and rabbits laughed at the dogs and their inability to do what they were bred to do.  The dogs would bark at them, but most of the time I think our dogs thought the squirrels and rabbits were just very small quiet dogs.  The biggest game our dogs knew of was the mailman.  He was the enemy, not the outdoor animals. 

My dad finally managed to get the dogs down to the basement (they were like me, they did not like the basement and would avoid it at all costs).  Once down in the basement, the dogs ran around like nut cases.  They had no idea what they were looking for, let alone try to find a scent.  The beagle (Tippi) was the one to finally notice that the outdoor scents had somehow moved inside. 

Our basement door was right across from our back door.  My mom had set up the baby gate in between these two doors and the kitchen.  This way when the scared squirrels were running up the stairs for their lives they wouldn’t get confused and dart into the kitchen and subsequently the rest of the house.  We had the back door propped open, and two dogs in the basement. 

Like I said, Tippi is the one who finally caught a scent and realized it.  She started to bay.  For anyone who hasn’t heard a hound bay, it sounds kind of like a wolf howl only not as mournful.  Beagles and bassets have very distinctive bays.  If you heard it, you would know it.  And this is the first time that I ever heard these two dogs bay at something that they were bred to bay at.  Usually this was a sound that alerted us to the arrival of our mailman (i.e. the dogs mortal enemy).  Tyler must have either caught the scent too, or just started to bay because it was what Tippi was doing.  For all I know, he thought the mailman was in the basement (these were not the smartest dogs). 

All the barking and baying and encourgement from my dad finally alerted the squirrels that the jig was up and it was time to get out.  The dogs chased these poor squirrels around the basement, baying the whole time, for about 5-10 minutes.  They finally managed to get the squirrels up and out the doors while only a few steps behind the terrified squirrels.  It was the quickest I had ever seen these dogs move on the steps. 

From that point on, I don’t think the squirrels and rabbits ever felt safe again.  I think they knew that the dogs were on to them.  My dad found out how the squirrels had gotten into the house in the first place and fixed it so that we wouldn’t have any more unwelcome visitors.  The dogs were fully rewarded with an extra cup of food at their dinner time and all the table scraps they could handle during ours. 

 I have a cat.  A psychotic cat.  A cat who will not let me go into the bathroom by myself.  I think she’s afraid that I’m going to somehow hurt myself.  Which actually brings up a funny story. 

One day I went into the bathroom with a cat underfoot, and I asked her (yes, I talk to my animals) if I needed supervision.  She looked at me as if to say “of course you do.”  I proceeded to to step into the garbage can.  I said ow, my husband laughed hysterically. 

Anyway, when I do close the door all I hear at the door are furious, furry beatings on the door.  Since my husband works during the day, I can usually do everything that I do in the morning with the door open.  This appeases the cat, and doesn’t freak me out when I hear the noises at the door.

So, one day I’m in the shower minding my own business.  The cat had been in the bathroom with me when I got into the shower, therefore I expected her to be there when I got out. 

Yeah, she was still in the bathroom with me.  Hell, she was in the shower with me.  And she appeared to have no problems with getting wet.  I on the other hand, did have a problem with a cat sitting in the shower with me and staring at me.  Maybe I need to learn to shower with a swim suit on? 

Whoever says that cats don’t like water, is a liar and must meet my cat.                                 

Friday afternoon/early evening, I went with my girlfriend and her son (the 2 year old) to a children’s museum.  My girlfriend is a daycare teacher and very into her son learning and being around other children.  Since her husband is out of town on a job, I joined her for the excursion. 

The museum was great.  I like to just watch people (I will often go to the mall and sit somewhere and watch the insanity) and I think parents (sorry) tend to be the funniest breed ever.  The children don’t really care what they are doing, all they know is that they are free to run around and in this particular building there is nothing that they are not allowed to touch.  Of course all the parents are trying to get pictures of their children doing these wonderful activities and a lot of the parents I observed wanted their children in some ridiculous pose.  This alone was worth the price of admission for me (it should be noted that no admission was paid on my part because my girlfriend and her husband had bought a membership for one year).

The museum closed at 5:00 pm, so of course everyone and their mother is out on the road at that time because it’s Friday and rush hour.  Not to mention that we have to pass O’Hare Airport which always makes for fun traffic, and then on top of all of that it starts to snow.  People in Chicago always act like it’s a big surprise that we get snow.  Every year we go through some kind of dementia that makes us forget that we experience a good portion of the weather elements including, but not limited to, snow.  So, traffic has slowed to a standstill and my girlfriend and I start to think that the planes are landing on the toll road when the boredom of being stuck in a car for over and hour in the same 2 mile strip of road takes over. 

Digital cameras are dangerous objects for bored people to have.  I don’t know how legal this was, but let me say that no license plate pictures were taken and I’m pretty sure that no one actually saw the flash but us.  And God knows we weren’t doing anything above 5 miles an hour.                                                                                                                        

The thing that started this was, well some people think a car is a dome of invisibility.  I saw a guy all alone in his car and perhaps due to his bad habit, that is for the best.  If he hadn’t been knuckle deep into his nose, I would have let it go and not said a single word.  But he was, so I had to say something to my friend.  At this point she said that wouldn’t it be funny if people thought someone was taking pictures of them in their car.  I agreed (boredom will make all good judgement go out the window) and proceeded to dig my camera out of my purse.  Now, I wasn’t really taking pictures, more holding the camera up to the window and pressing the button so that the flash would go off.  I have some wonderful pictures of snow on the windows.  At one point we saw a car that was pulled over on the shoulder.  He must have slid on the snow because he was facing traffic the wrong way.  They were teenagers of course so we had to take their picture.  My girlfriend took the picture from her side of the car (we weren’t moving) but alas more pictures of the snow. 

One day a week my husband works late so I go over to my girlfriends house to have dinner with her and her family.  This is sort of my extended family because I have known the couple for about 15 years.  I went to visit her in the hospital the day her son was born, and so on.

Their son is turning two this February, so he’s pretty much got this whole toddler speak and thought process going on.  You can just see it working in his head when he looks at you. 

The adults are sitting at the table still eating dinner, and he’s roaming free because he was done.  Anyone with a toddler knows that it’s just easier to let them be free then to even attempt to keep them in their seat while you continue to eat.  So, he’s roaming free and just yelling “Ma!”  Kari (the mom) being the good mother she is, keeps replying “What?!”  But he just keeps calling for her.  Finally he comes into the dining room/kitchen and once again yells “Ma!”  She looks right at him and says “What?” 

(This is where it gets funny, I hope.)

At her reply, without hesitation, he says “Uh…” and looks away, sort of like he suddenly forgot what it was that he wanted from her.  He even held up a finger as if to say “Hold on, it’ll come back to me.” 

Toddlers, natures tiny comedians.