The icing on the cake

Duuudes,

The problem with the cake was that I forgot to frost in between the layers. There was no creamy frosting oasis amongst the sweet, sweet cake. Just more cake. So I brought out the extra can of frosting and we dipped. Yummy!

The blanket above is the Woven Moments one I was talking about. It came out great, didn't it? And it's thick, too. I just sent them a picture of Dallas and 7 weeks later the blanket came in the mail. Brian loved it, naturally. And since in the picture Dallas is sitting on the family room rug, and we keep the blanket in the family room, it matches perfectly. It's the circle of life, if life were color coordinated.

Mary is also pictured above, just cause. I have never changed the name of the file that I keep her pictures in on the computer. It's still called "MJ", her in utero name, short for Mary James, The Baby of Uncertain Gender. Just as Annie was AJ for the months preceding her debut. Mary still isn't cruising. Mostly, she can't even lift her tummy off the ground when she crawls. "Git that belly offa the ground yew yellow-bellied maggot!", I goad, to no avail. But girl can MOVE. And she finds trouble. One minute playing with parent-sanctioned baby toy, the next mouthing Henry's kong. Nice. For all her early personality flaws, Annie was not a trouble-seeking baby so this new vigilance is taking some getting used to.

Because I am slow, February is when my New Year's resolutions are going to take effect. Of course I want to lose weight. Will that be easier once I stop breastfeeding (the great myth of breastfeeding having been the weight that supposedly just falls off)? Or will this take a concerted effort to stop eating potato chips? And I want to blog more, cause I like to. And my e-mailing has really been falling off. And this JOB thing. Great, now I'm depressed.

Dallas Update

I think I may have become a pessimist because I was so certain that we'd hear bad news regarding Dallas' biopsy but it wasn't so bad. Well, the tummy tumor is malignant but the vet said it is the kind of malignancy that won't grow. The tumor could come back in the same spot but if it does (and there is a 40% chance it will), it can be removed again. So, yay!

And Dallas is acting more sprightly than she has in awhile, now that those big lumps are gone. A aurprising, good thing for the new year. She keeps referring to herself as a cancer survivor now so, whatever.

My sister is getting a third dog, God bless her. Her house is already total choas (2 dogs, 1 cat, 2 guinea pigs, fish, 2 kids) but her husband heard of a dog that had been kept by its owner in really crappy conditions for all 8 years of his life. He was removed from the home and has heart worm and but my sister decided to take him to make his golden years happy. And they will be, lucky dog. His name is MJ after Michael Jordan but my niece just informed me via e-mail that they will change his name to Huckleberry. As you do.

I made a crucial error on Brian's birthday cake, one that toally defeated the purpose of making a round cake rather than a sheet cake. Look at the photo above. Can you see my mistake???

Get well soon, Big D

I know. Totally lame, I am. But I was busy with playing Santa and then home to Chicago for New Year's and the cat ate it and I got a flat tire and blah blah blah.

So Happy New Year, y'all!

It was good to be home. I miss my family and friends and I miss Lake Michigan. It probably wasn't a good idea to ever move away from the Lake. It was my anchor growing up. No wonder I feel so rudderless here. How am I supposed to have a sense of direction when my absolute East doesn't exist?

As you can see, it's game, set and match on the girly shite with Annie. Sigh. I even let her buy The Little Mermaid yesterday at Target with the money her Grandma and Pop-Pop gave her for Christmas. Later, Brian and I had to call her Ariel. I know when I'm beaten. But I am signing her up for Spring soccer this week; the dark side shouldn't go unchecked, after all.

I still had trouble making amends with all the STUFF my girls got for Christmas. It makes my stomach hurt a little to think about it. There's the things that Santa brought, of course. Then between the 2 of us, Brian and I have 10 siblings. Plus the grandparents. Just so much stuff. I think that's why I might be overreacting a wee bit when Annie asks for ANYthing these days. I just never want her to take receiving gifts for granted. But she's only THREE, says the devil's advocate that rents in my brain. She doesn't know from spoiled. The whole thing left me feeling unsettled and I am still trying to work out why.

Dallas had surgery the day after we returned home. She had had these fatty growths for almost as long as I've known her. They might appear, disappear and reappear over a period of time, but none ever grew to be too large until recently. Three pretty big ones came and didn't leave plus one hard one, lime-sized, on her tummy that we really didn't like the looks of. The vet ended up removing 6 sizable lumps and biopsied the tummy one. I already kind of know that it's malignant, though we won't find out for sure for another week or so. I don't say that lightly, but part of loving Dallas so much has always been trying to brace myself for eventually losing her. She's a big dog and twelve years old and I can do the math. Since we had everything removed though, I think we bought (and paid dearly for, money being no object with regards to our beloved D)her a couple more really good years. OH, Plus? We got her teeth cleaned and it's a miracle...she has like no breath at all! Her breath used to smell like the inside of Nickerson's Fish Market but now it's the carbon monoxide of breath, totally odorless. But poor dear is all staples and bald spots.

Timely, then that I got Brian a woven blanket with Dallas' image on it for his birthday, which is tomorrow. Well, Dallas and I went in on it. It looks pretty good, though the picture I submitted was a little dark, in retrospect. Tomorrow I will make him a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting because that's what he wants and he obviously doesn't know any better because anyone who knows anything knows that white cake wtih chocolate butter cream icing is really the finer cake.