what are you doing new year's, new year's eve?

tonight will be The Lamest New Year's Eve I've Had Since High School.

not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

erin and jeff are coming over.  i'm making a big pot of chili.  and brownies.  with pecans, if i get a wild hair.

wait, erin, do you like pecans?

autumn will eat too much sugar and get overly worked up playing with jeff, and then fall asleep on the floor before the ball drops, and we'll have to wake her up to watch it and she'll be cranky.

aislinn will miss it altogether, i'm sure.  bedtime for her is becoming established at 9:00 p.m.  (her decision, not ours--i'm following her lead on her sleeping needs).  problem is, she's decided that sleep is for the weak, and that everyone in the household must arise and embrace the day with her at 5:30 a.m.

and she's still feverish from her shots.

boy, i'm going to be ringing in 2009 with a bang!  this is exciting stuff, ya'll.

what are you doing tonight?

4 month check-up

aislinn had her four-month check-up yesterday.  as a reminder, at her 2-month check-up her stats were as follows:

head circumference: 10%*

weight: 30%

height/length: 30%

now her stats are as follows:

head circumference: 25%

weight: 30%

height/length: 60%

she is getting long!  and she weighed 12lbs, 10oz.

she also got her second round of vaccinations.  all was going pretty well afterward--we came home and she nursed and played and napped, but then she woke up around 7:00 p.m. SCREAMING.  she took a bit of a bottle from jake and then screamed hysterically for another hour.  wouldn't nurse, wouldn't take a bottle or a pacifier, i could barely hold her she was so rigid and upset.  her right leg (where she got the pediarix injection) was red and swollen, and i'm sure it hurt.  i put her in a bath and she calmed down a little, but as soon as i took her out she was screaming again. it was awful - she's a sweet, mild-mannered baby, so this was WAY out of the ordinary.  i have never before not been able to calm her.

finally i broke down and called the pediatrician.  our pediatrician rocks, btw, and returns calls personally until 9:00 p.m.  i love him.  he told me everything i already knew, but i needed to hear it from someone with a D.O. a the end of their name, not a J.D.  by the time i got off the phone with the doc, jake had calmed her down and she was sleeping in his arms, dancing around in the dark bedroom.  i took her to bed with me and she was up and down until about midnight, fussy and restless, at which point she passed out and slept until 7:00 a.m.

i have always been on the fence about vaccinations.  i'm sure they work (well, not 100%, but at least some), and i understand herd immunity.  but it scares the hell out of me knowing that i am intentionally exposing my child to dangerous substances, and that she could become a statistic, one of those children who has an "adverse event."  

don't get me wrong--i don't believe in keeping kids in a sterile environment.  kids are made to get dirty, and each childhood cold or fever, while miserable and sometimes scary, is an important building block in their developing immune system.   but that's a separate post.

the first firm i worked at did a lot of "catastrophic" medical malpractice, meaning they took cases where people were $eriously injured, not just your average old slip-and-fall.  i saw a vaccine injury once while i was there, and it stuck with me.  a beautiful, perfect little girl who got her 12-month booster shots and then over the course of the next few weeks lost substantially all of the motor function in her lower body.  they refer to them as "neurological events," and the pharmaceutical companies and the government adamantly contend that they can't be convincingly linked to vaccines.  but then in the very same breath they've set up the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund which pays hush money to the parents of children who have had catastrophic reactions, while simultaneously shielding the pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits or any type of liability for injuries to children caused by their products.  the Vaccine Injury Compensation Trust Fund, which pays out all that hush money, had a balance of 2.5 billion dollars as of this time last year.  but they say there's no link.  seriously?  that goes beyond the pale.  

i mean, i get the government's outward motivation - the health of the masses, the greater good, herd immunity, prevention of pandemics, eradication of disease.  

and i also get their underlying motivation.  vaccines are products, developed and sold for profit.  products full of aluminum and viruses and other substances known to be toxic that were injected into aislinn's tiny little twelve-pound body yesterday after i signed consent forms acknowledging that the benefits outweigh the risks.

but do they?  i'm not convinced.

when my dad was a kid, in the pre-vaccine-schedule 1950s, he suffered a series of serious illnesses (the measles and the mumps among them) that, combined, left him deaf in one ear, and also likely caused the tiny, invisible weakness in his heart wall that three decades later led to his sudden death at the age of thirty eight.  if vaccinations had been available to him, this might have been prevented.

and as my pediatrician noted, "what is the first serious illness that you actually remember from your childhood?"  for most people, it's the chicken pox.  and now the varicella vaccine can prevent my child from having that same memory.

we all want to protect our children, but vaccines are not without risks--yet an overwhelming majority of parents consent to them, blissfully unaware or intentionally uninformed, without blinking an eye or asking a question.  and it's true that the vast majority of children do just fine. 

but i feel that along with the knowledge that i have comes the obligation to ask myself, which is more dangerous?  that my child might suffer a life-threatening illness and i'd have to live with the knowledge that her exposure risk was heightened because i chose not to vaccinate?  or that my child might suffer a life-threatening illness because i intentionally had her exposed?

yesterday when the nurse brought those shots in and laid them on the exam table next to aislinn, my eyes welled up as i looked at them, and it was all i could do to not stop her.  i had said to the doctor, "tell me i am doing the right thing."  he assured me that i was, but all i could think about was that little girl who couldn't walk anymore.  i was consumed with fear that the same might happen to aislinn, right there before my very eyes, as i watched syringe after syringe being stuck into her thigh.

and the sound of aislinn screaming last night has further shaken my obviously tenuous faith in the safety of these shots.  i have a lot of thinking to do in the next two months before she gets her next round of vaccinations at six months - including her first MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella - the vaccine most publicly discussed for its potential link to autism).

it is a terrifying choice to have to make - and not one that should be taken lightly by anyone.

________________________________

*these are her "percentiles," meaning that if she's in the 30th percentile for weight, then 30% of babies are lighter than her, and 70% of babies are heavier than her.

aislinn's christmas recap

oh hai, guys. i wanted to show you my favorite christmas present.

i has a sock monkey.

nonna made it for me.

i chews on it.

NOM NOM NOM

tastiest sock monkey ever.

four months old

rolling over

playing with aunt erin

please note the LSU onesie from uncle mark in baton rouge.

more aislinn pictures

sitting in my bumbo chair

learning to crawl

The Bailout

sorry about the language.

and the formatting.  click for the full view.

naptime

jake.

aislinn.

valkyrie.

just because

while i'm recovering from the festivities...

i've been posting more pictures of autumn than aislinn lately, which is probably because aislinn's a passive subject, whereas autumn is all "OH LOOK THE CAMERA CHEESECHEESECHEESE!!!!!!!!" 

i need to even it out.  aislinn picture tomorrow!

gratuitious christmas tree pics

putting the star on top of the tree is still a Very Big Deal in autumn's book.

it ranks right up there with the publisher's clearing house sweepstakes and mary poppins.

meanwhile, here you can get a glimpse of the radioactive yellow in the formal living room.  we're calling it the "piano room," because it's where my grand piano is going to go when we get around to calling the piano movers, which at this rate should be sometime around august, 2012, assuming that the mayan apocalypse doesn't happen.

it's seizure inducing, fo' shizzle, and quickly making its way up the list of "things that absolutely must be painted first," right along with the living room shelves, living room walls, kitchen, kitchen cabinets, bathroom cabinets, bathroom, hallway, upstairs, autumn's bedroom, aislinn's bedroom, the guest bedroom, all other surfaces downstairs, and all other surfaces upstairs.

happy holidays, all.

santa claus is coming to ... woodland hills mall

we were lucky this year to get a really great santa.

dude, the whole mall santa thing is a WILD CARD, especially when you are dealing with a kindergartener who truly believes that she just whispered into the ear of old saint nick himself.

last year we got a defunct santa at utica square, who whispered in autumn's ear, "but don't you want a [insert impossible to find toy of the season here, which autumn had NOT asked for and which we had NOT purchased]?

it was, like, three days before christmas at the time and all autumn could talk about was how santa told her that he was going to bring her an [impossible to find toy of the season]!

thanks, mister claus.  better luck next time.

something's rotten in bethlehem

now, just who is that lurking behind babyjesus on my mom's piano?

is that? is it? isn't that.... 

PISTOL PETE?????

c'mon, maw, ain't nothing sacred?

i've been informed by my sister that my blog has "sucked lately," so i'm going to make a concerted effort to post EVERY SINGLE DAY until 2009.  call it my pre-new year's resolution, if you will.  after new year's, well, it's anyone's guess.

late for the sky

i'm thinking about changing the title of my blog to match the URL.  should "tzar of arbitrary land" become "late for the sky?"  it'd be more cohesive, and "late for the sky" matches the jack kerouac quote better, even though the inspiration behind the URL came from the jackson browne album, and not the beatnik.

what do you think?  vote on the side column.

who can identify this cookie?*

*decorated by jake this saturday when autumn and i were waist-high in gingerbread. 

next time when i think to myself, "wow, five cups of flour seems like a lot," i'm going to GO WITH THAT INSTINCT and cut the recipe in half.

here is a gingerbread "glinda" angel that jake made for autumn, who is the biggest wizard-of-oz-ophile since my mom was a little girl:

what is gingerbread? you fools. milk is better.

this wash cloth tastes better than anything you could mix up with butter, sugar, and spice.

it's got DREFT.

the whole family participated.

please ignore the fact that autumn is in her pajamas. 

i won't tell you what time of day these pictures were taken.

if anyone would like some gingerbread, please contact me,

as i have approximately sixty dozen gingerbread cookies

in tupperware on top of my fridge.

questions

because i'm lazy today...

1. What's on top of your computer monitor? Anything?
nope. macbook.

2. What is your favorite Christmas song?
carol of the bells, sung a capella in my sister's car.

3. What's the latest thing you bought yourself that was something you probably shouldn't have spent money on?
i haven't bought myself anything in a long time. i'm a mama now.

4. What's the most obnoxious thing you've said to anyone in a public place and why?
i'm not obnoxious. or at least i haven't been since i was 23 or so.

5. What show did you HAVE to wake up for on Saturday mornings to watch as a kid?
fraggle rock, or land of the lost.

6. What's the hardest part about your job?
other people refusing to bend to my will.

7. If a color were a flavor, pick a color and tell us what flavor it is.
purple is sugared violets.

8. If a color had a sound, pick a color and tell us what sound it makes.
pink is a bubbly, popping sound

9. Politics is subjective and alterable to varying degrees. Where would you say your political ideologies lie?
libertarian. don't legislate morals to me, and stay out of my pocketbook, too. i like to pick my own charitable causes and big business isn't one of them - as a result, the feds have been particularly repugnant to me lately on both counts.

10. Do you drink? What's your favorite drink?
yes. diet coke. with bourbon.

11. What is your favorite Christmas treat?
gingerbread.

12. Describe your worst apartment/house.
in college i lived behind the metro diner and my clothes always smelled like chicken fried steak.

13. What's been the best place you've ever lived in? Why?
i'm pretty fond of the house i'm in now. the house in norman was cool because it was right by the stadium and hello hellacious off the hook pre/post-game parties.

14. What's the one thing a coworker does at work that completely drives you batty?
i don't have co-irkers anymore.

15. What Christmas song do you hate the most?
anything country. i'm not one of those all-out country haters, but time and place, people, time and place. christmas means frank sinatra, rosemary clooney, and nat king cole.  

16. What are you going to do this weekend?
clean.

17. What do you usually give/receive in your Christmas stocking?
uh, we give little toys and chocolates and oranges. when i was a kid i received toys and candy. when we got to high school it was trinkets, makeup, cash. now at mom's it's back to little toys plus one nice thing - last year it was pearls, this year cashmere scarves. YAY FOR HAVING PARENTS WITH GREAT TASTE.

19. Do people generally understand you?
hahaha that's a timely question, actually. if you don't understand me, then i'd say that's your problem and not mine.

20. Are you flexible?
in multiple ways.

21. Do you have presents under the Christmas tree yet?
si.

22. Do you act your age?
si.

23. What do you think is the ideal age?
22 was pretty freaking ideal.

24. What is your favorite vegetable?
brussels sprouts

25. What is your favorite fruit?
grapefruit

26. What's the last thing you bought? Are you glad you bought it?
bottles for aislinn. sure.  she's certainly glad.

27. Speaking of shopping, would you rather buy a gadget, clothing or something else?
clothing, always.

28. Do you wear any jewelry every day? Describe it.
nope, although i have a silver ring that i bought in santa fe that i wear quite a bit. and a diamond ring from jake.

29. Where have you travelled in the world? What has been your favorite place so far?
venezuela, the bahamas, bonaire, aruba, cancun, ireland, isla mujeres - i can't choose.

30. It's late at night and you cannot sleep ... what do you do?
i don't understand the question.

31. What's the front page headline of your local newspaper today?
"Faith builds character." no comment.  actually, yes comment:  faith doesn't build character - both character and faith are built by struggle.

32. What's the last thing that really frustrated you?
other people refusing to bend to my will.

33. Do you make your bed every day?
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

34. If you could be anywhere at this moment, where would you be?
in my unmade bed

35. What does your family usually serve for Christmas dinner?
it's different every year. this year we did mini cabbage rolls, stuffed mushrooms, a cheese and nut plate, a huge salmon with cream cheese and capers on a sliced baguette, twice baked potatoes, broccoli cheese soup, and a whole beef tenderloin with burgundy sauce. there were going to be italian sausage-stuffed phyllo dough, but erin didn't like how they turned out so we were all denied that savory delight.

36. Did you go to college? What did you take? If you didn't, what were your reasons for not going?
twice. lots of stuff. resulting in lots of very, very expensive pieces of paper for my eagle wall.

37. Do you like kids? Do you have any? Do you want any?
i like my kid, and one or two others, but as a general rule, no, i do not like kids.

38. Give us a good Christmas recipe here.
yeah right. no, wait - apple cider, sugar, rum, a pat of butter and a stick of cinnamon. heat, serve. duh.

39. What does your house smell like when you walk in?
pumpkin candle, laundry, coffee, and hopefully not cat litter.

40. What do you want for Christmas?
unima​ginab​le mater​ial wealt​h and the power​ to make other​ peopl​e bend to my will.​ well,​ reall​y,​ thoug​h,​ if i had eithe​r one of those​,​ the other​ would​ natur​ally follo​w.​

bad blogger

i have sucked at blogging lately.  the christmas chaos, coupled with a shortage of childcare and an abundance of new divorces ('tis the season), has left me with little spare time.  

aislinn starts at her first official daycare on january 5.  part of me can't wait to have her right around the corner from my home and office, no more driving her around to people's houses, no more scheduling work around when other people can watch her.  i'm proud to say that she's almost four months old and just now going into daycare, but it has not been easy.  

and the other part of me is terrified of leaving her with strangers for the first time.

i've also been bad about taking pictures lately.  i haven't even posted pictures of the new house.  let's just say i have many, many things to paint.  the living room is sage green and dusty blue.  OH! THE AGONY!  not my style at all.  the whole house is very 1997.

as a little intro project, i bought some small cotton laundry baskets to put on a small shelf and labeled them "jake," "melissa," "autumn," and "aislinn," to house the mountain of paperwork that blows in and out of this house every day.  i am sick to death of bills, junk mail, drawings, letters, christmas cards, and notes from school being strewn over every available surface.  i bought a can of spray paint to paint the little shelf, took it out in the back yard, armed myself with some latex gloves and old clothes, and set myself to the task of remaking the shelf into something cute - and then it was all sputter, sputter, sputter.  a defunct can of spray paint sent my first project awry.

now the baskets are piled on top of the kitchen table - MORE clutter - and the shelf is still on the back patio.

this house is never going to be finished.

autumn leaves are ... dramatic

and here we see the rare autumnus precociousnesica breaching the surface for a breath...

[click for bigger]

...and back down it goes into its native habitat.

oh, look!  a view of the face!

in yoga, this is known as the "fall ostrich pose."

seriously.

okay, not seriously.

"AHHH THE LEAVES ARE SUCKING ME IN!"

"OH THEY'RE EATING ME!"

[this is real dialogue. i have it on film. someday i'll learn to post videos.]

"AH I WILL NEVER GET OUT!"

"IT POKED ME IN MY EYE!"

*GASP SPUTTER CHOKE*

save me?

oh, to be six years old again.

ice storm

tonight is the one-year anniversary of the ice storm and i won't make an commentary on the weather tonight other than to note it's sleeting.

shall we walk down memory lane and take a look at what my yard looked like on december 10, 2007?

miraculously, we never lost power.

i think we were the only ones in the state.

luckily our new house has a fireplace. 

it's crackling right now.

in completely unrelated news, aislinn is three months old.

daycares and dreary weather

today i'm on round three of the daycare hunt.  first round was the downtown daycares, when i thought i'd be going back to work at R&M.  second round were the glenpool daycares, when i decided i'd be planting roots out south.  now here we are, vetting a third round of daycares in jenks near our new house.

i am SICK TO DEATH of daycare shopping.  they all smell like stale cookies and milk, with the little children in their exersaucers with runny noses and coughs.  if i thought i'd have the demand for it, i'd open my own daycare, with lots of hip decorations, organic menu, degreed staff, and coldplay for babies piped through the rooms.  and something better than a 4 to 1 infant ratio.  every daycare points out "and our infant ratio is 4 to 1!" like that's some huge selling point.  dude, it's state law.  otherwise your infant ratio would be much higher, don't kid yourself.

there's gotta be a demand for something better.

man, that's really all i've got for you.  my life is extraordinarily ordinary these days.  maybe someone will back into my card in the target parking lot tomorrow fried-green-tomatoes-style when i go to do christmas shopping and i'll have something a little more riveting to report.

signing off,

melissa

the cute baby circle

this morning my cousin gave me a book that his daughter makenna made in school.  makenna is a third grader at jenks east elementary, and autumn (being in kindergarten) looks up to her more than a little for her cheerleading prowess and general knowledge about all things elementary school.  when aislinn was born, jasen and makenna came to visit me in the hospital, and i guess it made a real impression on makenna.  

My ant had a baby and I got to behold it on the same day it was born, and it was crying "aeeeh aheeeh waah waah!" her name is Aslan. Aslan fineshed the 3 cute baby circle. Aslan, Tie, and Amilia. there all so cute! A three cute baby circle is when you now three cute babys. I'm pretty sure Aslan was born in the same hospital as me!

My ant's name is Melisa, and she is realy pretty and nice, when we came in the room she was in, she was eating two colosal bags of taco beno, it was so funy! Oh ya and her hair color is gold.

We all asked how it was having Aslan and she said "it was okay she just came wright out," then we went to go see aslan once more. I think it started at 7:00 and ended at 8:00, but I am not sure. She is a exceedingly heathy baby and cute baby too.

first place in the the "steal my heart" contest of the week goes to makenna c.

advent conspiracy

omgomgomg

new favorite website: etsy

i've heard it mentioned in passing but didn't know what it was.  today my friend carrie posted an etsy link on her blog to some christmas stockings she is thinking about buying, so i went there.  it's basically the amazon.com of handmade items and artwork.  

homemade jewelry. hand knitted scarves. photographs. artwork. candles. quilts. stationary.  ohmygoditstoomuchtotakeinallatonceaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

if i were buying christmas presents this year, they would be from there, but i'm taking a "less is more" approach to gift giving this december.  less stressful, less harsh on the pocketbook, and better for the earth.  ALL THAT PACKAGING it's too too much.  i am already dreading all the plastic waste from aislinn's christmas takings.  she's three months old and already living in a world of plastic.  plastic swing, plastic playpen, plastic toys.  can't we just get some good old wooden blocks and a couple of organic cotton onesies?

dangit.  i meant for this to be a baby-free post.  

i'm a mommy blogger.  it's final.

i love it when

aislinn falls asleep in her swing all "ohmmmmm"

***

i am evil genius baby, mwa ha ha

wait! what's this??

i taste delicious!

mommy has too much time on her hands.

bathtime

thanksgiving

i didn't take a single picture on aislinn's first thanksgiving.

there, i said it.

but to be fair, aislinn's first thanksgiving was also the single fussiest day of her wee life. she is going through her three-month growth spurt, and she is HUNGRY! i just can't seem to keep up. she had been nursing nonstop and was getting frustrated, and by thursday evening when we got to mom's house, she was flat-out mad, and ironically REFUSING to nurse.  after taking a small amount of frozen breastmilk salvaged from a bag with a hole (first time i've had a hole in one of the bags, of course it would happen right then) and lot of tears (some hers, some mine), aunt erin ran to wal-mart to get some formula. and so it goes that aislinn had her first bottle of the fake stuff.

she didn't even notice.  

thus aislinn's first thanksgiving meal was half courtesy of mom, and half courtesy of enfamil.

i hate formula.

since then we've been limping along by supplementing just a little bit a day, maybe 2oz here and there mixed 50-50 with breastmilk.  aislinn doesn't mind a bit, and she's tolerating it well.  but *i* mind.   i mind a lot.  i had all these lofty goals of exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months, and never a drop of formula to pass by her little pink lips.  the formula companies! the conspiracy! the chemicals!  but the best laid plans, you know...

the most important thing is that i'm not giving up, and that meanwhile she's not hungry.  we'll get past it--especially since we've got such a good support network.  thank you mom, erin, and maria.

here is a picture of aislinn in her thanksgiving outfit.  yes, this is a recreation of the actual day, but she really did wear it.  and she really did look cute.

when she wasn't howling at me, anyway.

gobble gobble, ya'll.

there.

much better.

my html might be rusty, but my photoshop is slick.

i hate all these templates

i can't find anything i like.

i'm fooling around with my template. obviously.

ANYONE KNOW BETTER HTML THAN ME????

from today, courtesy of aunt erin

aislinn

rolled over today.

moving day

we're in the house. i'm friggin exhausted. if you've called me and i haven't called you back, i apologize. i will. but at least we're on the "getting better" side of the event. closets are being filled, boxes are being emptied.

and a special thank you here to my sister erin and her husband jeff and jake's friend jerry for helping us move, and my mom for helping out and watching aislinn and bringing food, and joe for being there in spirit even though he was home sick. and jake's parents for loaning us the trailer and bringing food as well.

food is good. i am sick of pizza!

also thank you to mom and joe for all of the love, support, and advice they've given jake and i the last few months as we embarked on this house-buying adventure. i nearly lost my mind, but thanks to them i did not.

dood, my feet hurt.

onslaught

for erin

murphy's law

as you probably have noticed, i have not posted any pictures of the house, because i forgot to take my camera to the inspection. i'm a bad blogger.  bad melissa!  so instead here's a picture of a tv abandoned on main street in bristow--what is this about, anyway, an abandoned tv on main street, how does that even happen--that jake and i totally wanted to take and put a fish tank in but we didn't have room in the back of the jeep that day so instead i circled the block and made jake wait while i took pictures:

***

sunday jake, aislinn and i went to meet our friends matt and jessalynn for brunch at kilkenny's. it was the perfect sort of sunday.  we slept in (which these days is anything past 7:00 a.m., which is remarkable in that just a year ago i could sleep as late as 7:00 p.m. on a sunday, depending on the events of the night before), and then i went in to work for a while to get some stuff done, and then i came home to a sunny, half-packed house, dressed aislinn, and headed off with jake to cherry street.

when we made plans to meet at kilkenny's we didn't know that the tulsa 1/2 marathon would be going on, so it was an incredible hassle to actually get to cherry street with all of the streets blocked off.

we got there and had a great brunch and conversation.  we ordered the chese torte with sundried tomatoes, pesto, and goat cheese (is that irish?  more like italian).  jake had the breakfast boxty with his favorite franziskaner hefeweizen (definitely german), and i went with the corned beef and cabbage and a guinness (there we go!).  

(i love guinness.  here is a picture of some guinness that i took in ireland.  "drink me, as i am your friend, and i will make you happy," sayeth the guinness.)

a more perfect photograph was never taken, don't you agree?

they say you can tell what country a person is from by the number of rings left in their empty guinness glass.  if that's the case, i'm definitely irish.  three rings for me--not like these american teetotalers with their 15 rings and their watery pale lagers.  pfft.

and here's a picture of me in ireland that i'm posting just because i came across it on my external hard drive when i was looking for the picture of that guinness glass and hey! look! i used to be skinny!

***

after brunch at kilkenny's, jake and i went next door to the peace of mind bookstore because i wanted some new incense for the new house.  the peace of mind bookstore is everything i love about a business all wrapped into one: local, original, eclectic (very eclectic), smells good, interesting, and did i mention local.  it's in the middle of the block sandwiched by kilkenny's and aquarian age massage, which is also one of my favorite places.  you just have to go check it out. it's like you stepped right into 1969.  where else in tulsa can you get a massage from a woman in a tie-dye dashiki in a room that smells like 25 years' worth of nag champa?  

actually, yeah, don't answer that.

ANYWAY, for those of you not in the know, the bookstore and the spa are kind of one and the same, bookstore on the second story and spa on the first, connected by a bizarre labrynth of wooden staircases and twists and turns.  the bookstore doesn't have a credit card machine so if you're not paying with cash, they take you down to the spa to run your card.

long story short, jake needed to pay with a card so he followed the guy down to the store and left me up in the bookstore.  i decided to follow them, so when the guy got back i asked him to take me down, too.  i was carrying aislinn in her carseat, where she'd been sleeping, and as i stepped down off the very last step of the several winding twisting staircases into the dark hallway by the sauna, i totally missed the last step and laid myself out flat.

luckily the way i fell, i just kind of sat the carseat down on the floor as i went down, so aislinn barely even woke up.  but i knew immediately my left ankle was in bad shape. the bookstore guy just kind of stood there on the staircase landing above me looking freaked out.  not that i really blame him.

i really wanted to just burst out into tears but instead i took a deep breath and was like, "um, okay, can you go get my husband and ask him to come back here when he's done checking out?"  the guy like raced past me, and comes back into the hallway with jake, who raised his eyebrows like, "alarm! alarm! woman and baby on floor!  what in the name of guinness is going on!"  

i said, "okay, i fell, i'm okay, but i hurt my ankle, i need you to pick up the carseat and help me up," and he did.  i was wearing leather loafers which was lucky (there's a little alliteration for you) because it was easy to slide onto my already swelling foot.  i limped out onto cherry street and jake helped me across 15th, through all of the lithe, spandex-clad runners with their unsprained ankles.  no, no, not a bit embarassing.

by the time we got home my left ankle looked a giant golf ball.  i took a painkiller and i don't even think it ever kicked in.  and then to add insult to injury, i started getting a migraine because of the ONE glass of guinness that i'd had for lunch (guinness has the same compounds in it as red wine when it comes to triggering migraines - most of the time i can dodge it, but yesterday i gambled and lost).

so yeah, i'm home today, laid up with a bum ankle and one gigantic headache.

please, god, if i can just make it through this move on saturday alive and not destitute, i think it'll be a success.