A hole in my head

Does anyone one know where I can go to get a hole in my head? Not sure what kind of hole I might need. Definitely not one of those gross ear gauges. Probably not a nose ring. But I definitely think I need a hole in my head because I also felt the need for one of these:

Her name is Gabby. She's a 3-ish year old basset beagle mix, also known as a bagle hound. I found her on PetFinder.com when I was looking for a medium-sized, housetrained, good with cats, non-puppy in early July. I've been e-mailing back and forth with the Loving Heart Animal Shelter about Gabby since then.

Alyson from Loving Heart brought her over to visit today, which turned out to be an adoption not just a visit. Annie fell instantly in love. Robbie, who is a little unsure of dogs, has thoroughly enjoyed her. She likes to play ball so that made her immediately a fit for Charlie.

The only family member who doesn't like her is Dungy. When Gabby came through the door, Dungy was sitting on Mike's lap. He jumped up, ran into the kitchen and arched his back. I didn't actually hear him hiss, but I'm pretty sure he was thinking it in his head. A minute later, Dungy ran upstairs and kept watch from the top of the landing. That is until Gabby ran up to check her out. That's when Dungy ran for cover in Charlie's room. We haven't seen him since. Alyson said to just let them get to know each other on Dungy's timetable.

So far we've found out that Gabby will snag food off the table if its available, is good walking on a leash, likes to cuddle and doesn't bark much. In fact, we haven't heard her bark at all, even when Annie took her on a walk and they passed several other dogs.

So about that hole in my head. Maybe that's the wild thing I'll do in honor of my 40th birthday -- wilder than getting a dog, that is.

Crab salad

I just posted this status update on my Facebook page:

"Warning: I am crabby today. Like I could eat small children for breakfast. That is all."

For the record, I already had breakfast (that did not include any human ingredients), so I am not crabby because I'm hungry. And I feel a little guilty spewing my crabbiness online on a Sunday, but I'm hoping that getting it off my chest makes me feel better.

So here is a list of ingredients for today's Crab Salad:

1. My children keep reading over my shoulder. "Mom, what did you just type? Why are you looking up that?" Next time they do it, maybe I'll Google "How to give your kids up for adoption" or "3 ways to pay for military school."
   
2. Mike is trying to plan a 40th birthday party for me, which is very nice. What is not nice is that he is not listening to my pleas for something simple. So when I logged into Facebook to see that he is looking for a freaking BAND to perform at the party, I went from content to crab in about 1.4 seconds.
3. I'm anxious about money. Who isn't? But this time of year -- back to school -- seems to suck it out of my bank account faster than it goes in.
4. Charlie's birthday party is today (only 4 weeks after his actual birthday) and he's not being very humble about it. I know he's excited and he's 11 and it's my job to teach him to be humble and gracious, but why does he have to be so thick-skulled about it?
5. Robbie did not go to bed until after 11pm last night because I was not home. And the effects of the late bedtime are already showing. This must-be-within-3-feet-of-mom-at-all-times phase is really starting to wear on me.
6. I have to go back to work tomorrow and I'm regretting not getting more done around home during my week off.

I guess the good news is that I didn't even make it to 10 things that are making me crabby. Only 6, which is likely manageable. So maybe later today I'll be able to come back here and post something that is more wit than whine. Thanks for letting me vent.

Friday Frags: Feelin' Fine

Goooooooooood Morning Froggy Friends! (said in my best Adrian Cronauer voice...hmmm, wait while I go add "Good Morning Vietnam" to my Netflix queue...) It's Friday and I am feeling F-I-N-E! So good in fact that I'm going to link this post up to Friday Frags and Feel Good Friday, just to mix it up a bit.

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While I've really enjoyed my week off work, I had a meeting this morning that reminded me how much I like working, too. I'm so glad I can work part-time and have the best of both worlds.

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Have you ever had the experience of one person doing something simple that brings a smile to your face? It's happened to me twice this week. The first was the guy at the ice cream counter in Kringle's Kafe at Holiday World. I asked him if he could give us a single dip cone, but with two flavors on it. He said sure. (These are the biggest single dip cones I've ever seen.) That's not what made me smile. What did it was him asking if it mattered which flavor went on the cone first. If you are a.) an ice cream aficionado or b.) a parent of a child whose ever had a meltdown over the fact that the chocolate ice cream was not on top of the cookie dough ice cream, you would smile at that question, too.

The second person to make me smile was a lady cleaning tables at the Central Library this morning. I said hello and asked how she was, to which she replied "Comme ci, comme ca." I recognized this from my high school French class, but I couldn't recall exactly what it meant. She sensed this and told me "that means so-so." Then we had nice, but brief, conversation about languages and her home on the Panama Canal. It was just such a friendly, and unexpected, exchange that I had to smile.

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When I opened my e-mail this morning, I had a note from the blog Quoteables in the Blog World alerting me that I'd been quoted. The honored snippet was "One piece of anatomy I didn't need help locating was my right ovary -- because I'm pretty sure I dislodged it trying to do a move that should only be reserved for professional members of Cirq de Soleil," which came from my Namaste post. I did notice that most of the "quoteables" were a little risque in nature. I didn't dig back to see if they are always that way or if the Qoddess was going for a theme this week. But you can submit funny quoteables if you find some that should be shared.

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Yesterday, one of my children said something that made me sad and proud at the same moment. I can't say who or where, but let me just say that it's good to know that even in the process of messing our kids up, sometimes we can do something right and take small comfort in that.

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Tomorrow my sisters and I are taking our mom out for her Mother's Day gift. Can you believe she's never had a pedicure in her almost 62 years? So it's pedis and lunch and maybe a movie. My feet and my I've-spent-all-week-with-the-kids psyche are smiling already.

Hope your Friday is leaving you feeling F-I-N-E, too!

(! * # @ ; /)

As someone who writes for a living, I have opinions about punctuation.

I won't claim that they are the most knowledgeable opinions. Sometimes I'm unsure whether a comma or a semi-colon is called for. I use punctuation more because it "feels" right than because it fits within the rules set for by Strunk and White. That must be the creative side of me leaking out.

For a long time, I had a love affair with the ellipses. You know, those three cute little dots that allow a thought to linger. . . I still find the ellipses enjoyable, but don't use them as often as I once did.

The dash -- can't remember if it's technically an em dash or an en dash and I don't really care -- also has a place in my compositional heart. It lets me interrupt myself, which is something I do frequently when I'm talking.

As an editor trying clean up other people's writing, the bane of my existence has always been the exclamation point. Do we really need to make that many exclamations? And even if the situation calls for a statement to be delivered with that much enthusiasm or emphasis, in my mind there is never an excuse for the mulitple exclamations. Seeing !!!!!! in a letter or article just makes my skin crawl.

A strange thing happened, however. I started blogging and I started finding myself using the exclamation point more freely -- though never in multiples. What's more, I use it in combination with the question mark on a fairly regular basis. How crazy is that?!

Do other people think about punctuation like I do? Obviously some must because the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves was popular enough to make it to the book section of Costco. (Strangely, I've never read it. ) And way before Lynn Truss turned her frustration with punctuational ignorance into a best-seller, Schoolhouse Rock addressed the use of punctuation in the context of catchy grammar lessons.

Do you have a favorite piece of punctuation? Or are you like E.E. Cummings, who felt that punctuation was optional?

Rx for a sensory seeker

I've written before about some of the challenges Robbie has as a result of his sensory processing disorder (SPD). But he's come a long way and we've learned a lot about what works for him and what doesn't.

Rob is primarily a sensory seeker. That means that he is under-responsive to touch and movement. As a result, he seeks out what we refer to in our house as "deep impact." When he was a toddler, he was a literal head banger. If he's going to hug you, he's going to hug you hard. He loves to wrestle and knock over blocks and do lots of things that you'd expect little boys to do, but maybe a little more zealously than other kids. Swimming and gymnastics meet his needs more than soccer does.

Once we got hooked up with an occupational therapist who specializes in SPD, I jokingly said that the treatment for a sensory seeker is to allow them to do everything you've spent their whole life telling them not to do. Crawl downstairs on your belly headfirst? Go for it! Put all the couch/chair cushions on the floor, stand on a chair and jump into them? Have at it!

But I recently discovered an even better Rx for my little sensory seeker. Big, scary rides!

A few weeks ago, I took Robbie, Annie and a friend to Holiday World for a quick one-day trip as part of my Indiana tourism gig. I told Annie and her friend they could go off and ride all the big rides while I took Robbie to the more tame attractions. Well, Robbie wasn't going to have any of it. He begged, pleaded, whined and near pitched a fit that he wanted to ride The Legend, a roller coaster the girls were headed for.

So I sent him to the line and motioned to Annie that he was going to ride with them. Seconds later, I got a text from her:

"MOM! He's can't ride this. He's going to FREAK out!"

"I know," I texted back. "Then I can take him to the little rides and you guys will be free."

We were all shocked when he got off The Legend (100 feet high, nearly 60mph) and hollered "That was wicked awesome!"

I did let the girls go off on their own and took Robbie on the high-flying swings, the "octopus" ride, the Turkey Twhirl and several other rides that made me sick while leading my daredevil to a state of sensory bliss.

If I thought he was wild then, I had no idea what he was capable of handling. Last weekend, we took a mini-vacation back to Holiday World. This kid -- my little 7-year-old, 60+ pound boy -- not only rode The Legend three times, but he also rode the Raven three times and the Voyage (70 mph!) twice, along with several other wild rides.

Too bad I can't get our insurance to cover a season pass.

Those evil Happy Meal toys

I just posted "Why suing McDonald's leaves a bad taste in my mouth" on the FitCity Mom's blog. I'd love it if you would check it out and leave a comment there with your thoughts on the issue. Do you agree with me or think I'm way off base? Join the conversation at FitCity.

Good shoes and banana peppers

When I am an old woman...I will not wear a purple dress or a red hat. Nor will I join one of those clubs that insist you wear both at the same time. But as time quickly passes before my 40th birthday (32 days for those of you who are counting), I have noticed a few things that have changed about me as I've gotten older.

1. I will spend good money on comfortable shoes and a good haircut. I might wince a little at the register at first, but in the long run, I'm happier and I'm worth it.
   
   
2. The spirit may be willing, but the stomach is weak. We just spent a day at Holiday World and let me say, that if you spin me right 'round baby right 'round, like a record baby, I'm going to throw up on your shoes or have to sip Sierra Mist and sit on a bench for the next hour or so.
   
   
3. The spicier the better. Give me banana peppers over pickles on my sandwich any day. I prefer salsa to ranch dip for my veggies and chips. Unless I've just been on Paul Revere's Midnight Ride at Holiday World, in which case, give me a bed in an air conditioned room, hold the banana peppers.
   
   
4. Number 3 is only true if I'd had my little purple pill, which is Nexium for heartburn, not to be confused with the little blue pill, Viagra, which is for burning hearts of a different sort and which I don't think would be useful to me.
   
   
5. I am less sure of what I want to be when I grow up than I was at 22 when I graduated from college. At this point, I'm considering mortuary school, hospital chaplain, or being independently wealthy. It's a toss up.
   
   
6. I sometimes think it would have been nice to have one more child. Of course when I think this, I think that I should be paying attention for other signs of dementia.