The little angel has her first ear infection. I suppose we should be happy she made it to almost ten months before she got one.  She has the goop for the eyes and the dreaded Pink Stuff.  She does not like either one, but she has more control over the pink stuff - she can always vomit that back up if she doesn't like it.

Nothing breaks my heart more than to go into her bedroom in the middle of the night and see her sitting up in her crib, crying.  Not wiping away her tears, not hiding her head, but crying the way only little kids and the truly despondant can cry.  Someday in the future she'll learn to shield me and others from seeing how sad she really is, but for now, she just cries. 

Today we are going to sign the second extension on our contingent bid on the house up north. This Old House still hasn't sold, and I guess it must not be worth what we thought it was.  I don't quite understand that, because it appraised at near what we are asking for it before we painted it and added landscaping, but the entire exercise of trying to sell the house has made me realize IT IS ALL RELATIVE.

Take those poor people out in California.  We know the price of real estate in California is akin to the price of chocolate bars on Gilligan's Island.  If you're Mr. Howell, great, but everyone else is snacking on coconuts.  Think of the people who lost their homes in the mudslide.  It was horrible beyond belief for them, but they may have, MAY HAVE gotten an insurance payout.  Their neighbors, though - hoo boy.  I am having trouble selling my house because the neighbor across the street has a half-pipe and a Ryder van in his backyard.  What if it were 500,000 tons of mud that could fall on my house at any time? 

The value of homes = relative.

Now that the little angel can both crawl quickly and pull up to standing, things have changed in our household.

Sybil is no longer safe.

She'd grown accustomed to deftly sidestepping the little angel's grasping hands, and she even sought out the angel when she was eating for a nice pet.  At least she now understands "nice petting."  Gosh, that sounds nasty.  I didn't mean it that way. I'm talking about a baby and a cat here, people.

Anyway, two nights ago we released the little angel to the kitchen floor, and she immediately took off toward Sybil, spitting and squealing with delight as she pumped her little arms and legs like a new gym member on January 2.  Sybil started lazily walking away...until the little angel started gaining. Sybil jumped on the bench in the foyer. The little angel pulled up and reached for her.  Sybil panicked. I actually saw it on her tiny cat face.  It was like the time I Pledged the dining room table before she jumped on it. 

Sybil has learned to seek higher ground.

The little angel has always loved baths.  Last night we FINALLY remembered that we wanted to give her a bath in her new, inflatable, almost-big-girl tub, which sits in the actual bathtub, as opposed to the kitchen sink.  There are numerous advantages to using this tub, one being that some of the splashed-out water will now be located very close to a drain and the other being that more toys fit in this tub.

I don't know why it took us so long to make the transition. Probably the same reason I just took the bumpers off her crib two days ago, even though she's been able to pull up for a while now.  The shock of how fast her first year is going has not worn off.  You hear people say that all the time...but of course you do not believe that a year spent working harder than you have ever worked in your life could really go fast.  But the first year of the little angel's life has been akin to childhood summer camp - every day took forever, but the weeks flew by.  Before you know it, you are crying your eyes out because the person you didn't even know the month before is leaving, and you can't bear it.  It seems unbelievable to me that I didn't even know the little angel this time last year, and now she has gone and transitioned from a flesh purse in a carrying case to a little person who hugs and babbles and wants to WALK?

This weekend we took the little angel to the Great Big Frickin' Mall of the Great Plains.  It's an "indoor outlet," which is a loose translation for "where the Worlds of Fun people winter."  My beloved (quite rudely) pointed out while we were there, "There are some really ugly people here."  We are snobs.

However, there is a Carter's outlet at the GBFMGP, which we hit hard.  There is also a bright, shiny, noisy carousel in the middle of the food court. The little angel, who had been contentedly thumping her new tennis shoes against the stroller in tune to "Sunday Bloody Sunday" until that point, grew feverishly excited when she saw it.

This is the part where parenthood gets even more fun. We haven't gone shopping with the little angel - except for Target runs - since it got really cold.  And she wanted - no, NEEDED - that carousel to be part of her shopping experience. 

I paid my $1.50 and put her on the horse. Like a little English royal, she promptly grabbed the reins and began flapping them wildly, ready for the hunt.  When the horse started moving up and down, she squealed and flapped some more.  She is born to ride.

My beloved was disappinted because she didn't wave to him during our ten or so trips around the world.  I tried to point out that she doesn't really even get the concept of waving at all, but I don't think it helped.  I think he realized she's one day closer to her high school graduation.  I can't wait to take her for a pony ride.  Yeehaw!

Yesterday I dropped the little angel off at Oz.  Just as I was putting my shoes back on (they are not allowed for the little crawlers, which sounds nice and IS nice, but is a royal pain in the neck for those trying to remove shoes while holding an infant), I looked up to give the little angel a nice wave and maybe an air kiss.  She was standing in the exersaucer, happily playing with a toy, sucking on her paci.  All of the sudden, in swoops in Baby C., the evil Paci Bandit.  This baby bitch ripped my sweet baby's pacifier right from her mouth and put it in her OWN mouth!  Then, of course, the little angel began to howl like the hounds of hell.

I stood there, one boot on, one boot off, dumbfounded that violent crime begins so young. What's next?  Gang wars in the Pooh's Pals room? 

Well, I've been gone, okay?  My beloved and I left the little angel with my parents and whisked ourselves away to a fabulous ski vacation in lovely Breckenridge, Colorado. Wednesday through Sunday. It was the longest I have been away from the little angel since her birth, and I am happy to report I only wept as though my heart were breaking on two nights.  See?  I am still capable of independence.

Yesterday I returned to the furor of Corporate America to find my co-workers still suicidal and upper management still insane.  We heard some horrible news, and I left feeling more than a bit postal.  Then I talked to my friend who is going through some personal problems and whose birthday I also forgot on the worst day of her life.  I am a champ, aren't I?

This morning, I talked to my also-writer sister, whose will-I-ever-write-again breakdown I seem to have missed on Sunday, the day before my friend's missed birthday.  She said she needed a pep talk.  Now, my sister has been published in a major literary journal, compared to my small-peanuts local presses.  She actually has literary agents and equally snooty types calling her every few months or so to see if she has anything new.  Imagine that, someone calling you to see if you have something new.  No, I can't imagine it.  As you can tell, I am uber-sympathetic to her cause. 

No, seriously, though, I do understand.  I sat there in Breckenridge, waiting for the shuttle that was to contain three drunken Australian women who have traveled the world more extensively in the past month than I have in my life, and I worked on my latest short story.  I got four pages, and I felt like a rock star because there was one sentence in there that was almost okay.   Why do I do it?  I ask myself this question all the time.  The chances of me getting published in any real way are almost as bad as the chance of W. leaving a legacy.  My wit, unfortunately, is useful mainly as a corporate defense mechanism, one that keeps me safeguarded from getting sued when I want to mash the head of the IT department.  It protects me, much like being cute protects a little puppy left in the street.  People want to hurt me less when I crack a joke, even when it is at their expense.

You didn't ask for this, did you?  You logged on to read about my ski trip, not my sister's and my writerly naval gazing!  Aha!  You never know what you'll get. 

Another day that Oz is closed.  I woke up at 5:30 this morning to get some much-needed exercise.  I did Pilates to loosen up, then headed outside to scrape off the cars.  You might think this is a small endeavor - notice I did the Pilates to WARM UP.  I had to get in to the Explorer through the trunk, after ramming it with my shoulder about five times.  I attempted to crawl over the carseat, but since it is the size of a loveseat, that didn't work.  I again rammed the side door several times, until it popped open, damn near dumping my sorry butt onto the icy ground.  Thank goodness for those core muscles from the Pilates.

I got the truck started, then went to work on the real challenge - the Geo.  We started the Geo for about two nanoseconds yesterday - just enough to move it after we hit it trying to back out of the driveway - so it had been frozen solid for almost 48 hours by the time I tried to peel the sheet off the windshield and get the doors open.  Thankfully, the driver's side door had been opened in recent history, so I was at least able to start the car and turn on the rear defrost. It only took about 35 minutes for the rear defrost to loosen the inch of ice on the back window enough for me hack away a tiny hole, a little ice-fishing hole, so the windshield could gasp for air.

I can barely type now, my arms are so tired.  At one point, as I rammed down on the windows and door seals with my nuclear ice-scraper positioned much like Sharon Stone held her ice pick in Basic Instinct, I worried I might actually break the window. I thought how ironic it would be if I DID break the window, but the ice stayed intact.  I think that could happen.  But finally, I was able to open two doors and clear the front-side windows, the windshield and the back window on the car and everything on the truck. We now have two frozen-solid bedsheets languishing on our back patio - I'm pretty sure they will help us sell This Old House. That and the 100-year-old tree bent halfway over in the backyard. 

Freedom is an ice-free, startable car.

When I was in high school, there was this really dumb guy named Robert.  One day, Robert kept holding a piece of paper up to the wood-panelled wall in the history room, then he would watch it fall to the floor and look surprised. We all watched this for about ten minutes, on and off, until finally my friend Jeremy said, "Paper doesn't stick to walls, Robert."  Ever since then, it has been my internal rebuke whenever I do something stupid, like last night.

I did two stupid things, actually. In my urgency to grab the little angel and get her inside as the ice storm began to rain down upon us, I left the windshield wipers on in the Explorer.  This is my husband's pet peeve, but it is also VERY STUPID.  Because when your beloved goes to scrape the ice off the Explorer the next day and turns the truck on AND the windshield wipers are frozen to the windshield, well, they break. 

It's particularly dismaying when they break when you are trying to take the little angel to the doctor over a crazy-but-true poo mishap.  I'll spare you the details. 

Anyway, my beloved had to walk to the auto parts store (which is blissfully two blocks away), replace the windshield wiper, then start pulling the windshield-covering devices off.  Of course, I already told you that I used a towel, a tablecloth and a bedsheet.  NEVER USE ANYTHING WITH PAPER for this exercize.  While the towel and bedsheet were easily (well, as easy as anything frozen solid can be) removed, the plastic tablecloth with furry-ish paper lining, had to be chunked off in little, Christmas-tree splattered shards. 

Of course, my beloved did two stupid things, too. First, he parked the Geo right behind the Explorer.

Second, he backed into it in the Explorer because he didn't chunk the ice off the rear window. Well, we were late to the doctor.

Ole!  Welcome to 2005!  Glad to see parenthood hasn't made us any smarter.