Happy Birthday Gus!

An Interview with the Birthday Girl, March 28, 2011

What is special about today? Uh, my birthday?

Did anything nice happen to you today?

Yes. Miss Nancy hugged me. Uh, uh, hmmm… Granny and Papa came to visit. They gave me hugs and kisses.

What were your favorite presents? I got a hot wheels toy. My favorite present, oh this is a hard one. I don’t know yet. I can’t remember yet.

What is your favorite color? Pink.

What is your favorite dinner? Tonight it was spaghetti and meat balls

What is your favorite dessert? Cake. Uh, strawberry cake.

What is your favorite drink? Mmmmmmilk. I mean juice.

Where do you want to live when you grow up? Uh, in a big house. It will have big tables like ours. It will be purple. It will be special because I don’t know.

What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a scientist. I will make stuff. I don’t know what a scientist does.

Do you have a boyfriend? LEVI!!!! He’s my beau.

What is your favorite song? Call Me. I also like Don’t Stop Believin.

Where is your favorite place to visit? Granny’s House. And Shaeli and Raegan’s.

What’s your favorite movie? Barbie Shhhhhhhhh (Barbie in a Fairy Secret. She’s never seen it – just got it today for her birthday)

What does Mommy do for her job? You work with people and you help work. You fix computers and stuff.


What does Daddy do for his job? He works with people doing work. Help fixing computers? What does he do anyway?


If you could be any animal in the world, what would you be? A unicorn. Are unicorns real? Actually I will be a horse. Because I neeeeeigh.


What is your favorite snack? Um, I like cookies. And cheetos. Because they are so cheesy.


Who is your best friend? Marin. Ella and Emaree and Brianna and Jack. Except for my mama.


What is your favorite thing to play? Um, I don’t know. Outside?


What would you like the people of the future to know? I like Miss Nancy. I like lollipops. And I like fruit snacks.

What do you know about the world? The world has oceans around it. All the blue stuff is ocean. And Earth has always had grass. And there was an earthquake inside Japan.

What language do you speak? English. Yeah, and I can speak hmmmm… I don’t know. Yet. Oh yeah, I speak Spanish and French. Bonjour!


What songs do you like to sing? Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. And I like to sing Don’t Stop Believin’. And I like to sing Call Me. Also, I love you mama. At school I like to sing Oh I Wish I were a little juicy orange, juicy orange, oh I wish I were a little juicy orange, juicy orange, I’d go squirty squirty squirty over everybody’s shirty, oh I wish i were a little juicy orange!


Who is our president? Barack Obaaaamaaaaaa. I like him. Because he’s the best president. He made speeches to everyone. And he talked about our world.

What do you think about the Jayhawks? The Jayhawks play basketball and they always win it! They lost yesterday. So I’m gonna make them win today.

How tall are you? 50 hundred pounds.

How much do you weigh? 57 pounds. (mom note: close! 50)

Do you have a pet? Ranger Dog. He is the best doggy ever. Even when he wiped his butt on the floor.

The End.

By Augusta Anne M. age 5 (today!)

Mom, I can feel your heart

in your boob!

New Gus-isms

• As I was getting ready to leave for a business trip, Augusta started writing me a love note to tuck in my suitcase. It consisted of "A-U-G-U-S-T-A M-O-M D-A-D" over and over. I suggested she draw me a picture on the note. She rolled her eyes and said, "Excuse me, MOM. It's called a love NOTE, not a love DRAWING". I stood, corrected.
  

 

• Augusta told me, "I love you". I replied, "me too." She said back to me, "me twenty!"
  

 

• I was sad when she stopped calling them "hoowee hoops" and started calling them hula hoops.
  

 

• After a field trip to the school, she came home and announced, "I smell like a MONKEY!"
  

 

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Title goes here, blog below.

I've been seriously lame about keeping up with this blog. That's a shocker. I can't keep my house clean or my dishes out of the sink, what possibly made me think I could keep a blog going? So, for lack of commitment to actual topics, once again I'll resort to the random samplings my brain produces:

Loved the little bit of the original Battlestar Galactica theme that played on Caprica Friday evening.

Heading to Florida this week for work. Sorry I won't get to visit my family – just no time to visit and no car, and I'll be 2 hours away from them. Sorry family, next time!

A woman I strongly dislike lost her job Friday at the company I work for. After my initial elation, I felt ashamed that I reacted the way I did. No one should have to start over in this terrible economy. Not even the devil incarnate. In all seriousness, I should be ashamed of myself for making light of someone else's misfortune. I'm better than that. I still don't like her, but I still didn't have to be all 'walking on sunshine' about it, especially around others.

My very cool almost-4-year-old requested to watch the Tim Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie tonight. I freaking love that kid. Speaking of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, a friend of mine won a radio contest and will fly to London on Monday to attend the premiere of the new Alice in Wonderland movie. I can't think of a more deserving person to win such an awesome prize. Congrats Amy B, and have the time of your life!

A friend is having her first baby on Monday. Happy birth day, G-man!

Eric Stolz is hotter than donut grease. Still.

I can't wait for Flash Forward to come back. I want to flash-forward and see what happens, but I'm living my life spoiler-free these days.

"The Invention of Lying" was cute. I love Ricky Gervais. I wouldn't mind if he made a ton more movies.

What business does wrestling have on the Sy-Fy channel?? Seriously, I gotta know. And why did they find it necessary to change from "sci-fi" to "sy-fy"? How geeky does this make me sound? Rhetorical.

'Aliens'. Saw it again on tv recently. Ripley's so badass. I forgot Paul Reiser was in this. Oh, I had such the crush on him back in the day.

ALS sucks. Can we just get that out on the table? It took my friend Kathy yesterday. She was an awesome lady. A nice, genuine person with an eye for color, a flair for fabrics and a keen eye for design. She was a member of my quilt guild and was really a very cool lady. I will miss her. I wish I'd written her the letter I'd planned to write her since I heard that she was sick a few years ago. Don't wait. If you think you should, do it.

That's all for now.

Should we just start another group instead?

A girlfriend of mine asked me recently if I'd be interested in helping to plan our 20th reunion. First of all, TWENTY YEARS?!? Really?? It sure doesn't feel like 20 years, though I'm reminded of it each and every time I wash-that-grey-right-outta-my-hair. But this isn't really about us getting older. I went to our 10 year reunion. I came to the conclusion that we all looked the same but wider. Some of us had been in contact via email, or found each other on various websites like classmates.com but for most of us, it was a surprise to see what everyone looked like. We got to listen with awe and a twinge of jealousy to our friends who'd "made it", cheer for those who'd gotten married or just had their first babies. Others, like me, hadn't done anything of consequence but we all stood around and talked and laughed and caught up with each other. The thing was, we were hearing about it all firsthand, for the first time. A lot has changed since the last reunion. Now with tools like Facebook, we all "see" each other so regularly that I wonder if it will all be anti-climactic? Will we have anything to talk about other than Farmville and Vampire Wars? Will any of us be as interesting and witty without the aid of Photoshop and Google? More importantly, will we all be tweeting the entire event as it unfolds? OMG!!! You'll never believe who got FAT?!? Oh come on, we're all thinkin' it.

What bad mood?

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Let me rephrase that. I was angrily shaken awake this morning by a crabby 3 year old who demanded that I wake up and put on her show NOW. Hoping I'd be able to catch a few more winks while Augusta watched her show, I punched the power button on the remote, zoomed up to the channel of choice and shut my eyes. It wasn't to be. She complained about the show, the volume, the tv was too "sunny" (bright), she was hungry, she wanted MOMMY to give her breakfast NOW, DADDY DID IT YESTERDAY, you name it, she complained about it. I sent her to get changed and she yelled – YELLED at me, defiantly, NO!!!! We went around and around until finally I exploded and sent her to her room. I was so angry, and she was being so horrible and I just couldn't deal with her.

Augusta played quietly in her room (read: made a ginormous mess of teeny tiny scraps of wadded up paper strewn all over her entire room and in drawers) while I began getting ready for work. I stomped all grumpy-gills into her room and laid out her clothes. Getting her to get dressed in the morning on her own is a chore that I'm not cut out for. I typically ask her 5 or 6 times to please get dressed, then by the 7^th time I'm so worked up and cranky that I start threatening to take things away. This morning I was so irritated that I simply told her that 1. I was very angry about her behavior this morning, 2. I was not going to speak to her again until she got dressed and 3. if I had to remind her to get dressed ONE MORE TIME I was going to throw out her coveted Wizard of Oz pillow. She simply said, "Ok, Mommy. I'm sorry for being so mean at you and I will get dressed." I told her not to speak to me again until she was dressed and returned to my bathroom to dry my hair.

A few minutes later, I felt a teeny tiny hand tug on my shirt. I turned off my hair dryer and she said, "Mommy, I got dressed. How do you like my outfit?" I turned to look. I snorted.

I said, "wait right there! DON'T MOVE!!!"

She cautiously said, "why Mommy? Am I in trouble???"

"No!! " I shouted as I darted down the stairs. "I have to get my camera!"

For this is what she'd put together:

I have absolutely no idea to which bad mood you are referring.

xoxoZ