I'm too exhausted to properly catalogue my weekend, but the short of it is this:

• An eight-hour drive is a long f*cking drive even without a seven-month-old.
• With a seven-month-old, an eight-hour drive is enough to make you question the family bond.
• Holidays are both more taxing and more fun with a small children. They're awfully cute, and grandparents and aunts and uncles really adore them, but the problem is that they give you your little angel back after she's been wound up like a cheap yoyo at the last booth at Internet World 2000.
• Children don't sleep in Pack-n-Plays once they understand that you exist even when they can't see you.
• Nothing is better than sweet, blissful quiet.
• The little angel will go on a hunger strike if there is something better to look at. Like, oh, the general public, a high chair she's never seen before, or that panicked look on your face when you realize she's going to cry for food at 3 a.m. again because she hasn't eaten ALL DAY.
• An appreciation for physical comedy starts young. The little angel laughed hard for a half hour straight watching my beloved hit himself in the head with an empthy soda bottle (it was plastic).  I was shocked - I thought a healthy appreciation for violence was cultural.
• Little feet in footy pajamas just say "holiday."
• Even though everyone says not to compare your baby to others, it stung a bit that the little angel's one-day-older cousin is already crawling and she can't seem to get it down.
• However, she usually sleeps through the night, and he usually does not.
• I'm so happy the Christmas drive is only 2.5 hours and there is a crib at the other end.
• I noticed my nieces and nephews did keep aging, so the little angel should be relatively normal and much more fun to travel with by the time she is four or five, just about the time her younger sibiling will hit the terrible twos.

Slowly but surely, we are starting to get calls on This Old House.  Last night, I was told by an automated voice on the phone that someone wanted to look at it between 5:30 and 6:30.  This panicked me a bit, because I did not have a diaper bag with me and couldn't make it home before 5:30.  So (to quote my friend C.) I called Oz and told them to stuff the little angel like a chicken before I got there so she could hang until 6:30 without starving.  They did do that, so we were able to take in a successful Target outing in preparation for tomorrow's trip to Minneapolis (yes, dear readers, that is an eight-hour drive from Kansas City without a little angel, and yes, we realize we are insane to drive to the upper Midwest in November under any circumstances).  I love that you can now buy baby food in convenient multi-packs. Wouldn't want the little angel to get bored on vacation.  She did successfully add carrots and applesauce to her repertoire this past two weeks.

Around 6:25, her "I might be hungry soon" whimper had grown into a howl.  I decided to ask the skate punk pirate children next door if they had seen anyone enter the house recently. They looked at me as though I were being polite to the robbers and answered in the negative, so we went in.  I threw the Target bags on the floor, popped the toddler tub in the sink and proceeded to let the little angel smear peas, carrots and rice cereal all over her face and me.  I was, of course, wearing my chili-pepper apron spotted in baby vomit WHEN....

...there was a knock at the door. Opportunity?  No, the realtor. The very late realtor, with two cute yuppie people staring at my apron in something akin to horror.

The realtor apologized for being late and asked if she should come back. Having already let them get a gander at their future (they looked married and child-worthy), I decided anyone fool enough to go househunting at 7 p.m. on the Monday before Thanksgiving must be a potentially serious buyer and let them in.  They very nicely pretended not to notice me, but of course it was hard to ignore the redheaded little angel as she babbled happily at the newcomers and offered them her carrots.  I'm sure they were enchanted.

Today we had to vacate for an open house.  We went to my friends' place. They were out of town and had generously agreed to let us camp out in front of their big flat-screen television for a few hours while we let complete strangers walk through our house and make fun of our second-hand furniture.  I can just hear them in my mind:

Potential Buyer #1:  Wow!  Look at all this hard wood!  It's gorgeous, honey!

PB#2:  Yeah, but why do they have that dining room table from 1982 paired with the mismatched antique chairs?  I don't get it.

PB#3:  Hey, come upstairs!  I just saw this futon advertised in the Kmart flyer!

After two hours, we returned home to find a dark house and a missing realtor. She called to say there had been five people - two who said it was out of their price range, two who had just started looking and didn't even know what they wanted and one who was trying to sell a house contingently (I don't know if that is a word) just like us.  It was a little disappointing to not have had more people after spending so much time this week frantically painting, raking and generally spiffing up the place, but I suppose the off-side is that we have a really good-looking house right now. It's quite clean.

I think when we bought this house, our last realtor told us it had had eight previous owners.  That's not so bad considering that it was built between 60-80 years ago.  I think the house would probably want to get rid of us. We've been strict parents.  We always give it what it needs, but we call it mean names when it screws up.  Punishment is usually swift and dealt at the hands of a power tool or home-warranty contractor.  Or maybe the house likes that we always deal with its aches and pains right away.  Who knows how This Old House really feels about its owners.  I remember when we moved in, I was briefly genuinely afraid of ghosts. It is such an old house, and it made odd creaking noises at night that sounded JUST LIKE a dead person climbing the stairs. Just like. 

Well, we may not be going anywhere if traffic continues to be this light.  However, it's just like any sale - it only takes one person to get it going.  Guess we'll see what happens.

Last night, I spent about two hours reorganizing the basement. The whole time I was doing it, I was thinking about how no one had bothered to make the basement look nice when we bought the house.  I wonder if everyone who sells their house thinks these things while schlepping plastic tubs filled with crap you don't need into stacks no normal person would ever maintain (how would you find anything?).

As I reorganized the tool bench and proceeded to accidentally dump out one of those holders of fifteen million tiny, plastic drawers to hide tiny, metal pieces that must be sorted and maintained, I thought about how my beloved, who is on a business trip in Madison, should really be doing this instead of me.  I personally have reorganized the tool bench five times since we have lived in This Old House, and my beloved has trashed my organization with each new house project.  I do not know what half of those things stuffed in Sutherland's bags are.  They must not be important. (Famous last words).

I noticed while doing this that the little angel has already outgrown a tub and a half of clothes. These are just the clothes she owns. We are also giving back two full garbage bags of hand-me-downs to the relatives at Thanksgiving. How is that possible?  Did she even wear all of those clothes?  No wonder people with kids have so much junk in their houses. Kids are like little consumption machines.  She doesn't even know what a frequent shopper she is - imagine what will happen when she finds out?

This morning I got up early to do some Pilates and throw real food in the slow-cooker so that I can feed my darling mother something other than SmartOnes on her third evening in our house.  So far, I have just come home, worked on the house until the little angel's bedtime, spent some time with her and collapsed with a glass of wine in bed.  No social time with Ma. No nice, home-cooked meal to reward her for taking care of the little angel so diligently or (as she did yesterday) doing my laundry while I went to work. Mothers are so wonderful.  I used to not be able to imagine being that nice to someone. Then I started thinking about what I would do if Lily called me and said she was trying to get her house ready to sell in four days while working and taking care of her baby.  I would probably hop in my car, haul my rear to her house and do the same thing, except I would probably order Chinese.

So, we are now trying to sell This Old House.  There is a "for sale" sign in the front yard, a stack of flyers in the foyer and a bunch of signs saying "do not let cat outside," "do not let cat in bedroom," "do not let cat in basement" and "do not let cat drive your car."  Okay, I made the last one up. The cat isn't even speaking to me anymore what with all the hubbub I made reorganizing the closets to make them look bigger tonight.

As I was doing this frantic reorganization, I thought back to 2001 when my beloved and I bought This Old House.  We had been married for a few months. It seems like 80 years ago. Something about the baby does that to you, I think.  I remembered the New Year's Eve that I spent the latter part of passed out on the hall floor. The many different types of flowers I attempted to grow before we decided to put down 14 tons of genuine Kansas river rock.  Where I bought and when I framed every painting or photograph in the house.  The day we brought the little angel home from the hospital.  I remember getting out of the truck and looking in the back seat and thinking that I would never again just hop  out of the car without stopping to get my little girl or wishing she was still back there.  I remember the day we brought home the bushes planted in urns in the backyard, how annoyed I get with our four beautiful, mature trees every fall when they drop their leaves, how beautiful the hibiscus bushes are in August when they bloom lilac, pink and white.  How I have lived in this house longer than I had lived anywhere since my parents' house. This is the house where I really grew up, where I became an adult responsible for someone other than myself.  This front porch is where my beloved and I have had almost every important conversation in our marriage, from deciding to have children to deciding that I should go back to work to deciding he should not start his own business anytime soon to deciding to take a chance and try to put This Old House up for sale.  It is a bit bittersweet.

What is not bittersweet is the long list of suggestions our realtor gave us for "last-minute improvements."  One of them was "pull up carpeting upstairs and put down runner."  I thought to myself, is she crazy?  I'll bet she voted Republican. Does she not realize that we finished refinishing the downstairs hardwoods ourselves after we moved in?  Does she not realize that there is probably glue stuck to the hardwoods under the carpets upstairs?  That once we pulled carpet up, there is no putting it back down?  Does she really think this is something I could manage before our Sunday open house when my beloved is in Madison until Friday, my mother is passed out again on my futon and the little angel can't stand to be by herself for more than 20 minutes?  I pictured myself, little angel Baby Bjorned to my torso, ripping up carpet to reveal a glossy, perfect hardwood floor underneath, jogging to Pottery Barn and throwing down a cool $600 for a classic runner.  Yeah, and maybe French fries are good for you.  Maybe Bush will leave Iraq a functioning democratic state.  Maybe monkeys will fly out of my ass.

There were other suggestions on the list that made more sense.  Rake the leaves.  Clean the gutters.  For God's sake, screw an outlet plate over that exposed socket.  I can see the validity in those suggestions.  But PULL UP THE CARPET?  Is she insane?  God love her.  She is a professional.

But please.  Am I the only one who thinks that is insane?

My beloved has been on a junket to move for about two years now. Usually after something breaks.  After our plumbing fiasco last week, he revisited his bookmarked real-estate sites with a fervor I have not seen since the Royals had a chance at the World Series.

On Sunday, we packed up the little angel and drove up north to look around at *new*, plumbing-warrantied, fancy, shiny houses.  Up until this point in the fun game, even after we almost put the house up for sale last summer because I thought it might save our marriage, I have not really wanted to move.  However, yesterday I fell in luv.

I'm not sure I love the location, though. It's in a DEFINITE SUBURB.  With a STRIP MALL featuring Applebee's, Panera, Longhorn Steakhouse and myriad other chain restaurants flanked by big-box faves such as Home Depot and Bed, Bath and Be-aaauuggtch - not an independently-owned anything as far as the landscaped prairie grass can ripple.   

However, when I looked at the nice, big bedrooms with new carpets and walk-in closets, I felt a little drool starting to trickle out of my mouth and drip onto the little angel's head.  It was rather like the feeling I got when I realized how GOOD Lifestrides really do feel, even though I would never strut them around in public.   After spending the last six years with beautiful-but-dusty-and-freezing-cold, cat-hair-collecting hardwoods, my toes seemed to sink dramatically into the pile of the wall-to-wall. And there was a coat closet!  Imagine that in a house.  The basement didn't look like something out of Silence of the Lambs.  Ah, coo.

So, we put some money down to hold the lot. I have to say that I am not pleased with the idea of trying to sell This Old House over the holiday season. Somehow I think in the game of Santa V. Mortgage Down Payment, the fat guy can safely double-down.  However, that's what's funny about that little thing called hope.  Even after Bush won the election, '80s fashion really did come back and Martha Stewart made friends in prison, I still am able to naively think someday hybrid SUVs may be affordable.  Hey, I'm from Iowa.  Maybe we'll get this house!

I just got done reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote.  I'd always heard about it and had never even seen the movie. Imagine that.  Now I'm glad I haven't yet. I suspect most of what's good about the work is the style of the writing.  I haven't read In Cold Blood, for which I think he is most famous, but that's probably the subject of a different conversation.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is mostly about the power of imagination. Rather, Holly Golightly's imagination.   She reminded me of a foreign exchange student I knew in high school. I can't remember her name, but she was from some Scandinavian country and had the blondest natural hair I have ever seen.  It was short and messy, sort of Drew Barrymore in Mad Love, and she sat next to me in typing class.  By that point in high school, I was starting to come into my own, and there were not very many people who intimidated me.  Dammit, I was a cheerleader.

However, there was something about this girl, let's call her Heidi (I know for a fact that was not her name, but her name was the sort of native Scandinavian name that does not pop into one's head after fifteen years), something a little surreal. She didn't care what anyone thought, which was extremely rare in my town of 5,000. We had all known each other since preschool, knew each other's hot buttons, knew who had a retarded brother and who pulled the wings off flies in second grade.  We knew how to keep each other in line, which is why we all looked so eerily similar.  High school punishment is swift. 

Somehow, though, she managed to escape it, granted that green card of foreign exchangedness.  One day, while wearing a weird skort thing that we didn't have in our mall, she took out a ball-point pen (remember those?) and drew a line from her ankle to high on her thigh, beneath the skort's hem.  It was about two inches in from the natural line of her leg, on the downside, if you will.  I paused from "aaaaa ddddd jjjjj ;;;;;" and asked her what the hell she was doing.

She smiled.  Her teeth were horrible. "That's where my leg ends now," she said.  For me, someone who had stared at her legs in agony for years, certain they were too fat, too slack, too thick at the ankles, too tree-trunk-like, her statement was rather freeing.  The thought of seeing things the way I wanted to see them instead of the way the Stepford Kids did was one that had never occurred to me before.

I hadn't thought of old Heidi in quite a few years, but perhaps she was really Heidi Golightly, come to lose her tabby cat in typing class so that I could begin to change my own perception of reality. After all, it's all relative.  Even in Scandinavia.

Just when I thought I had seen it all, yesterday got even more interesting.  After braving a shower (and braving it is, because just imagine showering with hot water and then rubbing a nice, rough towel all over hands and feet covered in canker sores - yeah!), I noticed that the bathmat was soaked. Really soaked.  "How odd," I thought.  "I know I had the shower curtain closed."  Hmmm.

It really got interesting when I went downstairs and commented on this to my mother, who was staying with us until this morning, when the little angel went back to Oz and I returned to work.  My mother didn't think this was anything to worry about. I called my beloved and reported it to him; a plumber was already on the way because there was a bit of a drip in the shower anyway.  Yes, this is foreshadowing done badly.  My beloved also thought it was no biggie.

Five minutes later, I heard the disturbing sound of dripping in the kitchen.  I looked up, and there was a steady stream of water pouring down OUT OF THE LIGHT FIXTURE, WHICH WAS ON.  I shut off the lights and ran downstairs to try to figure out how to shut off the main water supply. My mother was quick like the wind with the wet-dry vac, obviously a veteran of leaks.  I was on the phone with my beloved, delicately screaming "Get home now! The sky is falling!" (I have always had a flair for the dramatic.)  Then I called the plumber, who talked me through turning off the water to my house. Apparently, the dipshits who owned the house before us thought it would be cute to paint the water shut-off green, which everyone knows is the color you are supposed to use for the gas shut-off.  Boy, was that confusing. The plumber kept saying, "Just shut off the one coming straight out of the wall." I kid you not, there are probably 32 pipes coming out of our basement wall - it's unfinished.  I was fairly sure I would blow up the house.  Finally, we got it shut off, my beloved arrived on the scene, the plumber arrived on the scene, and in short order, all was fixed.

Until the cat started throwing up all over everything. She threw up all over all the clean laundry. She threw up all over the rug.  She threw up so much that I called the vet, who of course said, "Bring her in." So when my beloved arrived home from work, we handed him the cat.  Apparently, they drew some bloodwork, charged us $158, gave her a Tagament to settle her stomach and sent her back home.  My mother passed out on the couch from exhaustion at 8 p.m.  I drank some wine.

Life can be tiring.

I have to say...doctors lie.  My pediatrician told me that these blisters don't hurt the baby, or maybe only the ones on her mouth would.  LIE! LIE!  LIE!  They hurt!  It feels kind of like having a canker sore on the OUTSIDE of your body.  Soooo sensitive.  Sooo easily inflamed by common household things like hot water, socks, rough towels.  Sooo hard to cover up protectively when you are out of Band-Aids.  And Tylenol is not the wonder drug for adults it seems to be for babies.

I know, my tale of woe is a little overdrawn. And it is. There are far worse things that could happen. I take comfort in knowing this will only last seven days max, and I am already on day three. Halfway home, or nearly. 

The bright side of the story is that my beloved mother has come down like a guardian angel to save me, taking care of the little angel so that I can work, helping to empty the dishwasher when the hot water bothers my hands and my beloved has disappeared to the office with his X-box (though I cut him slack, he's awesome with his mother-in-law in the house so long) and giving me hugs whenever I whine.  She did make me endure the Country Music Awards last night, though.  I was surprised - the last time she visited, she was into Beyonce. My mother has broad musical tastes. 

I noticed country singers sing about Jesus a lot.  Then, suddenly, there was a band called Big and Rich that had a MIDGET ON STAGE.  A MIDGET IN A BIG, ORANGE HAT.  He had two little canes, and he was head-banging to a country song. And there was a black cowboy in a Superman t-shirt. I was confused. I thought maybe I was stuck in the hazy mist of fever left over from the onset of hand, foot and mouth disease, shortly before the mouth part and after the hand and foot part.  But no, they were real.  The other country stars looked just as confused as I was. I can understand how, say, Dolly Parton and a midget might be in the same category, but the midget, the black cowboy in a Superman t-shirt and George Strait didn't really make much sense.  The only redeeming quality of the whole affair was about thirty seconds of Jimmy Buffett.

Speaking of Jimmy Buffett, there seemed to be a whole category of songs for which country stars had teamed up with the secular crowd. The civilians. Like Uncle Kracker.  What's up with that?  Is this like a funny new thing for country stars?  Slum a little with the mainstream folks before church?  I've never thought so much about country music as I did last night. Thanks, Ma.