I suck

Ok, in karmic retribution J's Mom offered all on her own, with no further crock-pot wrangling, to bring a vegetable tray -- finger food to go with the easy no-utensils-needed pizza. The perfect answer. I felt like a louse.

Then, just to up the ante and make me feel smaller even than a louse, J's Mom developed an infection on her leg and ran a high fever and had to go get the infection cleaned and treated and is on antibiotics and has to go to the hospital if she runs a high fever again. So I am a mere mite now, and threatening to be busted down to microbial status if anything happens from here. So let's all think meek, wholesome get-well thoughts toward J's Mom, if only to prevent me from disappearing altogether....

T minus 48 hours and counting. We are about 80 percent packed. It's down to the last crappy stuff that's hard to pack or you don't have the proper size box for, like shoes and filing and aquariums with actual fish in them.

We had a minor scare in that J's sister Shannon reported to us that the maid never came yesterday and that the house was full of crap -- mostly a big pile of Goodwill type items, garbage and recycling in the garage. The maid appeared today -- see now I told Julianna I could have sworn I heard Emmy say Wednesday, but nooooo, that couldn't be right -- and various people, maid included, have or are going to haul off all the stuff. So by tomorrow afternoon we will have a clean home free of debris. It was nice of Emmy to have the maid come, not strictly necessary but a nice touch. It will be swell not to have to scrub much. We have our hands full here, as I do not wish to leave a pigsty behind, so we intend to give things at least a cursory vacuuming and so forth. And I insist on scrubbing the toilet etc. Karmically speaking (and I'm all about the karma these days, in sort of a quasi-Christian paying-it-forward sort of way, not so much in an Eastern philosophy kind of way -- cultural appropriation at its finest IMHO) we owe it to the guy, for offering more than our asking price and not arguing over details. Really, aside from the delay in closing this has gone off without a hitch.

Delia is so close to crawling. She gets up on all fours and rocks back and forth, and can now get up to all fours from flat on her belly, albeit with no small effort, but she can do it. She also gropes around in the air with whichever arm is free when nursing, leaving itty bitty fingerprints on my glasses. And she's quite the expert at Bellowing For No Apparent Reason, a very important skill for the pre-pubescent set. And the pubescent set for that matter. Oh hell, most of us do it come to think of it.

You know, the painful part of nursing is bad enough, with the sharp little teeth and me all sensitive and everything. But the part that's really a bummer lately is the roving little hands -- patting, fingering, poking, tugging, pushing, snapping my bra strap, dirtying up my glasses, catching my lip, and pinching. For a while, until I could impress upon her how much I did not appreciate it via grabbing her little hand and saying No, she was pinching the back of my arm so hard she left teeny little bruises. And it's not so easy intercepting her hand across my body with my free hand without breaking her free from me which can be painful. So is it any wonder that although I am glad to nurse her and all that ooey gooey motherly stuff, I face each session with a mixture of stoicism and dread? Man, for a while I actively postponed it for as long as possible, when she was puncturing me with her fangs. She still does occasionally but only on one side and in one position -- naturally the easiest one -- so I am reduced to sitting on the couch, which is uncomfortable for me, and nursing her in the football hold on that side. I guess she must have a little burr on her tooth or something?

Well, got to run. Scraping litterboxes, Oh Joy!!!! And then to bed. Mmmm, maybe a quick shower before bed... wash off some of the littery goodness. As a courtesy to J, who as I write this is snoring on the couch, sleeping off her migraine medicine. I tried to get her to just go to bed but no, she preferred to stay on the sofa. It will take me ages to wake her up enough to get her to bed. *sigh.*