The world as I know it has come to a screeching halt.  As you constant readers know, I have recently upgraded my phone and it has been a less than smooth transition.  My cell phone carrier has made this a nightmare.

Well, something horribly, terribly distressing happened tonight.

On Tuesday, Roscoe knocked out one of Sassy’s front teeth.  It’s alright.  Both of those teeth were loose, so it just came out a little before it was ready.  There was a great deal of blood and hysteria, though.

According to The Bandit, my husband offered to put a bullet in the dog’s head.  My Honey takes his job as Papa Bear very seriously.  Of course, the dog was totally freaked out for the rest of the night – not over My Honey’s over the top threat, but because of how upset Sassy was.  He’s very sensitive. 

Tonight, Christmas Eve, I got off of work at 2 (yea!!!) and went home and promptly feel asleep.  I dozed off and on for a couple of hours and at some point my husband woke me to say he was running to get beer.  No Christmas is the same without it apparently.  I told the kids to get in the bathtub so they’d smell decent for dinner at my Mom’s.   I continued to blissfully doze, while in the back of my head I heard the kids splashing around.

And then the screaming began.  The bad screaming – you moms out there know the one.  I sat straight up in bed and, instead of visions of sugar plums, I was witness to a naked, wet, screaming, bloody Sassy.  Her brother had knocked out the other front tooth.  It looked like a scene from a Christmas with Stephen King – standing there with the blood running down her front, her hair all stringy and knotted, she looked like Carrie.

We found the tooth.  She hadn’t even known it was out.  She does look adorable with that huge space in her mouth.  Her Aunt tried to teach her the words to All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth.  If now isn’t the appropriate time for this song, then good grief, I don’t know when is.

ANYWAY, I put the screaming, bloody mess in the bathtub and leaned over the water and PLOP! there went my brand new cell phone.  So now Sassy and I are both crying, The Bandit is crying because everyone else is crying, and My Honey is like, “Jesus, I just left the house for a minute.”

Things move fast here at the Bright Compound.

I’m now on a suicide watch.  I don’t want to live without my phone.  It’s drying out and I’m paying a constant vigil.  But really, I don’t want to go on.  I’ll try to get a grip on myself.

So anyway, it’s going to be a very busy night for mystical people here tonight.  I hope we don’t have a traffic jam with both Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy showing up tonight.

This Christmas season has taken a huge toll on my writing schedule.   My brain has been busy, I just haven’t been able to spend much time on the computer.  I’m sure that the police department would be thrilled to know that I’ve written dialogue while driving down the street.  But in my defense, when you finally figure something out, you need to get it written down right away or it’s out of your mind, never to be found again.  And believe me, that is incredibly distressing.

The rewrites are going well, though.  Of course, they are turning out to be much more complicated than Isabella and I originally thought.  We stupidly thought that we could tear the original book apart and reorder things.  What we didn’t think about, of course, was that each of the characters are approaching each scene from a different perspective and they all have different agendas. 

Ava will be gratified to know that I am actually having a bit of fun with these rewrites.  She browbeat me into this for the longest time and, begrudgingly, I took this mountain of work on.  It’s much better for it.

I don’t know if I’ve said it to you lately, but I’d never get this done without the help of my sisters.

Thank you.

The other day, My Honey and I were driving across town.  We chose a route that would hopefully have the least amount of Christmas traffic.  This route took us up into the foothills and to some of the ritzier houses in our town.  We saw several open house signs and we debated whether we wanted to stop off and look at the houses.  We figured we’d at least get a cookie or something.

“I think our disco ball will fit nicely in the formal dining room, don’t you?” I’d ask My Honey in earshot of the agent.

“But I think we’re going to have a problem retro fitting that trapeze and the stripper pole with these 20 foot ceilings,” My Honey would say, picking his teeth with the corner of a credit card.

“You know, dear, I just don’t think that 5400 square feet is going to be enough room.” I would say in my haughtiest Thurston Howell III voice.

“Yeah,” My Honey would say, scratching his belly, “Where will we keep Cousin Cletus and the goats?”

When I grow up, I’m gonna be a ninja.  I’m working on my skills right now.  As I’m typing this, I’m listening for the tell tale crinkling of paper.  A minute ago I heard it and I jumped from the desk chair and crept softly into the living room to catch the culprit in the act. 

I got out of the chair very quietly and tiptoed across the wood floor, peeked around the corner of the laundry room and then skittered across the tile of the kitchen.  I pressed my back up against the wall by the pantry and, using a mirror, I could see into the living room and a perfect view of the tree.  His butt was up in the air because he was trying to get further under the tree.  It was perfect for an attack and that’s when I swooped in.

He’s got big ears so you have to be stealthy.  He’s good with his nose, too, but fortunately he’s preoccupied and I can get right up on him before he knows I’m there. 

It’s Roscoe and he’s singlehandedly trying to undermine Christmas.  

Sassy and The Bandit got caught up in the fervor of the season and wrapped a dog bone for him and put it under the tree.  I don’t think they fully understand the concept of a Bloodhound.  I know that wrapped bone made him insane the minute the package touched the carpet.  I couldn’t blame him for demolishing it the minute our backs were turned.

The problem now is that he appears to be checking the other presents for edible items as well.  As of right now, I will have to re-wrap 3 presents because he’s torn into them and tossed them aside when he realizes he’s not interested in Cd’s and flashlights and books and such.

“Bones, woman. Where are the bones?”

So for the last several hours we’ve been playing cat and mouse.  I hide and creep up on him and scare the shit out of him while he’s half way under the tree.  I find this to be extremely satisfying – although I will admit my hand hurts from smacking his bony butt.

Only two more days to go. 

I’ll bet if I can jump down on him from the top of the couch, that’ll scare him straight.

Deep cleansing breaths.

The Bandit “wrapped” this present.  The object inside is 1/2 the size of the wrapping.  There is approximately 22 feet of tape used to seal this package, and yet there are still whole sections loose as you can see.

I love my children.  I really do.  Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I’d lay down my life for them.  But this help with wrapping is going to do me in.  I’m sure of it. 

I have heard all the advice under the sun.  It doesn’t help.  I’ve been told to wrap them when they are asleep, but that’s too easy.  When they wake up, they’ll be crushed that I did it without them.  And quite frankly, I have greatly tired of being “the meanest mom in the world”. 

What it comes down to is this: I love wrapping and they’re ruining it for me.  And the thing that makes me the most upset is that I’m upset at all.  Really, it shouldn’t bother me.  I really hate facing the fact that I’m being a total bitch about it.

I’m going to have to get back to yoga or something.  Obviously, this is my penance for snooping in all those wrapped presents.

This came from the Dumbest Things Ever Said or Done calendar.

Strange Customs: Nineteenth century Italian Princess Christine Belgiojoso had her lover mummified after he died.  She kept the fond mummy in her kitchen cupboard.

So we’ll all agree this is weird, yeah?  I felt compelled to look her up based on this little snippet of information. 

She seems like a perfectly lovely lady.  It’s hard to tell someone predilections from a photo – or in this instance – a painting made in 1832.  According to Wikipedia, she was instrumental in Italy’s struggle for independence from Austria.  She was also a fairly well known writer and journalist.

And, apparently, she kept a mummy.  In the kitchen.  Next to the spices you think?

This is the best “Someone must be reading my mind” line of the day:

“Some years when I see a live nativity, I relate to the irritated donkey. This year, I’m hoping
to feel more like the oblivious cow.” – Allyson

Seriously, I’m thinking the exact same thing.

Sassy and The Bandit “helped” me wrap Christmas presents.  Sassy shamed me into it.  Much of the experience sounded like this:

“Wait.  Wait! WAIT!  Please don’t waste all that paper.  WAIT.  Just be patient, for a second, alright?  DAMMIT.  I SAID WAIT! No, once you put the tape on the paper it has to stay there.  See, I said wait.  Now it’s torn.”  Deep sigh.  “Alright, we’re done wrapping.”

We got two presents wrapped.  But, we sacrificed 73.4 feet of wrapping paper, 97 sheets of tissue and 2 rolls of Scotch Tape.  1 Desk chair was broken, the table was knocked over, and 1 mother is now drunk.

Some of you will ask me tomorrow after you read the above list if it’s really true.  All of it except the drunk part.  I wish I was drunk but I don’t have the energy to go uncork a bottle of wine.

While we wrapped, we watched the Wizard of Oz on television.  My mom will testify in court how well I know the Wizard of Oz.  I love this movie and can recite whole sections of it from memory.  I know the words to all the songs and even impressed my daughter by knowing the steps to the dance they do down the Yellow Brick Road.  My mom once called me up in the middle of the night in order to figure out a trivia question: What was Dorothy’s last name?  I knew it of course – even mostly asleep.

I was a film major in college – absurd but true.  I am a walking encyclopedia of classic movie knowledge – both on screen and the lives of the classic movie stars off screen.  And by association, I am pretty fluent on the literature of the 20s – 50s.  I wanted to name The Bandit Dashiell after Dashiell Hammett the brilliant creator of the “hard boiled detective” Sam Spade (as so brilliantly played by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon) but My Honey soundly vetoed it.  That is why I quickly vetoed all of his famous musician names when he offered them up for consideration.  (It took me a minute to figure out why I would refuse James Marshall, but then it came to me.  I am not naming my child after Jimi Hendrix – even though he was completely brilliant.  It’s just the way it is.  No Dashiell – No Jimi.)

This evening Sassy said to me, “You know this movie is actually pretty good.”

Deep sigh.  And Gone With the Wind is just a movie about the Civil War and Casablanca is just a so-so love story about World War II.

Grandma, Sassy and I made Christmas cookies today.  We didn’t finish, but we got a heck of a start.   The best part is that we didn’t burn any and then have to argue over divvying them up.

But today’s activities reminded me of another Christmas that didn’t go so smoothly. 

That year, My Mom and I must have been hexed because everything burned, came out flat, fell apart, or just plain fell.  It was a miserable baking day.  I came home that night with a zillion, naked, cut out cookies.  The kids got it in their heads that they MUST be frosted and their hateful father supported them in this desire.  Begrudgingly, I agreed to make colored frosting and we all decorated the angles and trains and stars, etc.  It took forever and I was completely fed up with baking all together by the end of it.

When they were all beautifully decorated I placed them all in ziplock bags and laid the bags in the oven for safe keeping from the dogs.  At that time, we had REALLY large dogs.  Much bigger dogs than Roscoe will ever be.  We had a Newfoundland named Sophie and a Rottweiler/Great Dane/St. Bernard mix named Hugh.  Sophie was 185 lbs at her biggest

and Hugh was tall enough to steal food off the kitchen counter by merely turning his head.  In fact, he ate an entire fillet Mignon one Valentine’s Day. 

The next evening was my turn to make dinner.  For quite some time I couldn’t figure out what smelled so awful until I realized that the blasted plastic bags full of cookies were preheating in the  oven.  When I opened the oven door, the plastic was dripping off the rack and onto the heating element and the cookies were coated in a layer of plastic.

My Honey came running into the kitchen at the sound of my screams and a 4 year old Sassy came running after him.  I stood there sobbing at the loss of the cookies.  I took it very hard.  After all the work and how everything had turned out so badly.

My Honey jumped into action, trying to save the day.  I just stood there weeping piteously and Sassy, getting right into the spirit of the holiday, stood at the oven door and screamed at me, “You burned the cookies! YOU RUINED CHRISTMAS!”

I swear it’s true.  I have witnesses.

God bless My Honey.  He put the kids to bed that night and stayed up with me until 2 or 3 that morning.  We rolled out dough, cut out the cookies, baked them.  And then he frosted every single one of those freaking cookies.  And no one had to die that Christmas.  He’s a good man, My Honey is.

I was thinking about getting this dog house for Roscoe, but I changed my mind.  It might be confusing for the mail man if his house looks exactly like mine. (hahahahahahahahahahaha).

But really, I can’t let the dog have a better house than my own.