I know, right???
I have not made a peep on this blog in LITERALLY millions of years (my definition of "pet peeve": using the word “literally” completely wrong).
So since you are dying to know, and by “dying to know”, I mean “couldn't care less”, I will update you on my stellar life…
My niece, Piper, is still the awesomest thing since unsliced bread. She’s now a year-and-a-half and the new things she does every time I see her are just amazing. And hilarious. She is so awesome, it is just beyond.
Behold the cuteness.
My nickname is “Aunt Tootle”, so she calls me “T” and that just simply rules. Also, she is turning out to be SO much like her Aunt T, and of course you know I just heart that. For one thing, she laughs really hard and really loud, with a bit of a scream-y edge at times, which only serves to make me go like this: BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!! And then I go “neener-neener-neener” to my brother because he always gets mad when I laugh too loud and wake the baby, and now I get to say, you better get used to it, buddy!
Second, I took the Pipe shopping with me and when I was ready to pay for my purchases at Sephora, she grabbed my credit card from me and handed it over to the cashier as if she’d been doing it all her life. Oh, the pride that swelled within me. On a related note, she’s also resembles a much younger but equally cute me in that she already has a killer fashion sense. She almost shattered the Richter scale of cute when she recently wore tiny baby boyfriend jeans complete with dark wash and fat cuffs and a long cardigan thrown over it. ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
Wearing the ultra-hip owl jammies I got her for Christmas.
Modeling for her one-year photo shoot.
And she’s almost as crazy about animals as yours truly…
Exhibit A: The “chore” that she’s taken upon herself to do at home is letting the dog out of her crate. She goes straight into Annabelle’s room and opens the latch on the crate (by herself usually) and then it is all business as she leads the little foofy Yorkie-Poo to the back door and commands her to “pee-pee!” And she FREAKS OUT if you try and do her “chore” for her.
Exhibit B: She’s also bonkers about my pit bulls. She yells to them incessantly, “Puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup-pyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!” 43 times in a row if they are not perched right next to her. She yells this as she beckons with a come-hither hand signal and then pats the spot next to her. She has taken to leaning in for a kiss right on their moufs and going, “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmwah!” as she puckers. Then giggles like a school girl when they kiss her back. Also, she doesn’t mind when they try and eat her, as pit bulls are wont to do with small children.
Fear me.
Exhibit 12: She loves the zoo. On a recent day off work, Christy, Piper, and I went to the OKC Zoo mainly so that Christy and I could torture ourselves after watching The Cove. If you haven’t seen it, it will shatter you. Anyway, we had a great time despite our guilt over oppressed dolphins. Piper kept yelling to the buffaloes, “Puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup-pyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!” I mean, it was pretty cute when she called the wolves “puppies”, but come on… gigantic buffalo puppies, Piper? Now that’s just getting a little ridiculous. Despite being in a zoo around lions and tigers and bears (I will not say “Oh, my!”), her favorite animal was always the “duckies”. I taught her what the goat says, which wasn’t difficult because they were “maaaaaaaaaah”-ing away locked behind the fence in their pen. I was pissed because the petting zoo was closed that day and we couldn’t even go in there and play with them. Besides, I really wanted to interview one of them and ask why their eyes are so creepy. Like Satan. Christy and I were gonna teach The Doodle what a giraffe says, but then we decided we don’t know what a giraffe says, so instead we taught her what the goose says. We saw some puppies (AKA foxes) going nigh-nigh (AKA sleeping) on a big rock in the sunshine, then listened to an old man regale his wife with fascinating trivia about the little critters he referred to as “MeerRATS”, and later we caught a glimpse of the rare Great North American Domestic Housecat as he stealthily stalked a trashcan. The trashcans got spooked and started a stampede and it all got a pretty crazy and I think I blacked out for a little bit shortly after yelling to my sister and her daughter, “SAAAAAAAVE YOURSEEEEEEELVES!!!!!” But the best moment of the day by far occurred in the ape house. There was a scholarly-looking nerdy dude sitting by the exhibit window sketching a gorilla. We sat down the way a bit right next to two other gorillas, one of which was pressed up against the glass as if he was leaning on Piper for support. We were pointing out the “monkeys”, naming them thusly for simplicity’s sake, and we were having a rousing game of “What does the monkey say?” when the artist guy, who was clearly on holiday from his home country Pretentioustan, dryly remarks, “AK-tually, these are apes.” *facepalm* I think Christy and I rolled our eyes so hard and so high up into our brains that we actually had a collective stroke. I think even Piper was heard to mutter, “OMG, what a buttmunch.” I’m pretty sure I heard her say that.
In other news… I’m going to be an aunt again!!! Christy is 6 months along and due late April. Just as Piper was nicknamed “Tater” before her gender and real name were revealed at birth, we have nicknamed the new baby “Beanie” because of that one time when Christy told us she was the size of a bean. Which leads me to the next thing… she... is a SHE!!! Just as they have with all other things baby, Christy and Jake announced this bit of info in surprise fashion. When they found out they were expecting Piper, they showed up to my parents’ house and took off their jackets to reveal these shirts they had made:
Then at my 31st birthday dinner this last September, their gift to me was the tee-ninesiest little onesie that said, “I heart Aunt Tootle.” My reaction? “This is so cute! But…………. it won’t fit Piper………?” To which Christy replied with a knowing look, “That’s because it’s for a newborn.” It took literally a bunch of seconds before it finally dawned on my dad, mom, and me what that meant. Best birthday present ever, though! Even if I was a little slow on the take.
And so, on par with the aforementioned shenanigans, my dad opened a package on Christmas morning labeled “From: Beanie”, which contained a DVD. Jake and Christy said it was the ultrasound they’d just had done. We were so excited, even though we knew that they had planned to wait for the birth of the baby to find out the sex, just as they’d done with Piper. We popped it in to watch and after several minutes of cooing over the grainy moving images, the song “Sisters” from White Christmas suddenly started playing. Thing is, we had watched White Christmas the night before, so at first my parents and I thought something was messed up with the sound and that we were hearing the other movie somehow. Which made zero sense because that DVD was no longer in the player, mostly due to the fact that the ultrasound DVD was. We are not rocket surgeons as you’ve surely surmised. And yet again, it was forever and a day until we finally figured out they were trying to tell us something. And that that something was that Piper would be having a little sister. We didn’t even notice at first that the labels came up on the screen pointing out the “girl parts” as the scan caught the, uh, business shot. Can’t get anything past us, no sir. We’re about as sharp as a feather bed upholstered in velvet floating on a sea of bubbles. As is typical, the response was in this order: me screaming and laughing, Mom bawling her eyes out, and Dad just sitting there with the proudest grin on his face.
My children, Snuggles and Clover, are still the cutest and funniest inventions since breadboxes were invented in order to store sliced bread. They are just complete dorkwad nutcases and they make me laugh everyday. I bought them backpacks to burn off some of their energy on our walks. I’m excited about that. Plus, they can carry all my crap. Like bottles of water. Poo bags. Trail mix. Mace. Trolls. A first aid kit. Emergency flares. My Smith and Wesson. Red lipstick. And spaghetti. It’s pretty handy.
Yes. Those are trap door jammies.
So……………………………… my parents moved in with me. They say it’s because they’re building their dream house and need a place to stay since their other house already sold, but really I just think it’s a classic case of “failure to launch”. It’s a pretty funny dynamic. Usually it’s a kid moving back in with his hapless parents and things quickly go south. Like when I moved back into my parents’ house in Oklahoma after having lived in Indiana for three years, one of which was spent solo in an apartment, only to find that the parentals were ready to reinstate the 8:00 o’clock curfew I hadn’t had since I was a toddler. During that first summer back home, I spent a lot of time of an evening at a coffee house located in an artsy, granola-type part of town. I would chill with my homies in the outdoor café area until the wee hours, just taking in the sounds of poetry slams, the wafting scent of patchouli, the snatches of conversations between self-righteous atheists, the wafting scent of clove cigarettes, the bitter taste of herbal tea that’s supposed to taste good but really it just tastes like freshly-mowed ragweed, the wafting scent of what I like to call “The Reefer”, and the mournful strains of an acoustic guitar behind an open mic. My Dad didn’t like this one bit. He would chide me, insisting, “Didn’t you know that’s where all the Vietnamese gangs hang out, Heather?” Dad likes to remind me that he grew up in Oklahoma City and knows everything about it, including, apparently, the fact that art snobs and Asian gangstas like to kick it together. I tried to tell him that all I had to be afraid of was dirty hippies. The worst they could do was kidnap me and force me to not shower. The fit really hit the shan the night I was “accidentally” out past 5 AM. Come on… 5 AM is not that late. I mean, actually, it’s early since it’s technically the next morning. So uh, yeah.
But that was then and this is now. And we’re having so much fun. I probably should mention that I sold my house and bought a new one back in April. I moved into an awesome 1938 Cape Cod/Colonial on a historic block and it's like a dream home. I will post pictures soon. My parents have an entire guest suite to themselves since the top two stories have a guest room, bathroom, and TV room. The dogs think they’ve died and gone to heaven what with Nan-Nan and Pa being accessible 24-7. And I have to say, since one of my parents usually beats me home after work, they go ahead and let the dogs out of their room and it’s so nice coming home to butt wiggles at the front door. Mom and Dad are roughing it, though. They’ve had to downgrade from their king-size bed to the queen in my guest room. And since the garage was converted years ago into an office, which has now became my dogs’ room, they are having to get used to the idea of parking Mom’s beloved Mustang and Dad’s F-3000-or-whatever-it-is gigantor monster truck out in the weather. In the driveway! What’s worse is my dad had to rent a storage unit for his Corvette. It must be rough. My heart bleeds for them. In all seriosity, they are model tenants and never complain even though I’m charging them $3,000 per day for rent. What? Baby needs a new pair of shoes. Preferably Louboutins. Speaking of, I get to indulge my love for dressing my mom up like my very own life-sized, middle-aged dolly. I think she doesn’t mind that part either. She’s also declared that she is taking over kitchen duty. And it’s not rare for me to walk out in the yard and find my dad raking the leaves. Word.
Let’s see… what else…
Oh yeah, almost immediately after turning 31, I received an AARP membership card in the mail. Not just once. But TWICE. Really? 31? Oh, and my little brother just turned 30. LOL. Wow, getting older is so weird!
We are so mature.
Other updates…
I am a rapper now. You read that right. I will put the videos up soon.
I am no longer addicted to “Words With Friends”. That ship has sailed.
I have never played “Angry Birds”.
The group I sing with actually got to perform the National Anthem at an NBA game recently. I will post more about that later.
I haven’t read any of your blogs in ages so I’m sorry for that and will try and get caught up soon.
Michael Jackson is still dead.
Snuggles and Clover have been asking to post more on the blog. Thus demonstrating that their mom thinks that just because she enjoys reading dog blogs that everyone else does, too. But how can I tell them no when they are just so darn adorable?
My hair is now a deeper auburn shade of red.
I still hate Nickelback.
And Michael Vick is still a grade-A, 100% certified, genuine douchebag.
What's new with you???
