I love to knit. I am a bit obsessive about it. There is yarn stashed hither and yon here. I have made blankets, sweaters, booties, bikinis and coffee cup jackets. But now I know that those things are what Grannies knit.

I read here how there are COOLER ways to put my SKILLZ to good use. (And maybe make some AWESOME cash on EBAY too.) And as I read further I found this song that totally redoes that annoying Black Eyed Peas song My Humps and makes it cool. WAY COOLER.

But then I am entertained by all of this for several reasons: 1) Toddler screamed like a wild Banshee all night, 2) I am a GIANT dork when it comes to crafts and 3) I don't think that I have had enough caffeine today and 4) Potty Training has once again failed. (The incessant peeing on the Berber carpet and the heat making it reek even worse than usual called all bets off.)

So enjoy the detour into the world that is not your grandma's knitting, and someone PUHLEASE send me a damn truck load of caffeine...quickly!!

I arrived home from errands with Toddler this afternoon to be greeted by a lovely magazine seller. Normally this wouldn't bug me. But today it pissed me off to levels that I can't even begin to explain. I mean seriously what is the deal, if I wanted to buy magazines or win someone a trip to the Bahamas it would be FOR ME!!!

So he greets me as I am unloading grumpy Toddler out of the car, blabbering on about a "points race" (something I am sure that he made up) and something about "overcoming a fear of public speaking" (This guy was about as fearful of public speaking as a used car lot is of polyester leisure suits) So I am crabby, it is hot, and the last thing I want is to be attacked by a PIE HOLE in the driveway about the importance of buying books for Toddler (who won't read them unless they are about trains anyway) or magazines for me, which let's face it I don't have time to read.

Then when I tell him no he gets all huffy with me.

Excuse me, you came to my home trying to sell me something. I did not come to you looking for something that you weren't selling. I can see an attitude if I had asked you for a Chanel Dress or Manolo Bhlanik shoes, but not when I told you that I DON'T WANT YOUR MAGAZINES OR BOOKS!!

And another thing last time I checked it is 2007, and we don't need sales people selling things door to door. We have the Internet and QVC if we want to shop at home in our underwear. And by god if you are over the age of 8 you should not be selling things door to door.

So Jeremiah, excuse me if I don't buy magazines from your lame old 20 + year old ass. I am too busy praying that you will get hit by a car or maimed by a rabid dog while traipsing door to door, all of that of course while cross stitching a lovely little sign for the front door that reads "Solicitors Over the Age of 5 Will Be Shot On Sight"

Potty Training is NOT going well.

Although I am not quite ready to throw in the towel like I was before when I wrote the Potty Training Diaries, but I might soon be ready to drink some martinis before noon and drive a rusty spike through my head.

Yesterday's casualties were 3 pairs of pants and underwear and a giant pee stain on the already nasty ass Berber carpet. Plus lots of screaming and crying about not wanting to do it and not liking it.

He did sit on the toilet a lot and pretend to poop though. Grunting like a wild and rabid animal. I did get a little concerned when he started turning purple (ala Violet Beauregard in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) and beads of sweat were running down his forehead. But I left the room and left hubby to deal with it.

So on we travel. Poop rewards placed out on top on the entertainment center. Toddler asking every 5 minutes what they are and where they came from. At least I guess he is interested. And he also sits on the toilet now too. So that is a bonus, we aren't stuck forever hauling that urinal around with us.

Now I just need hubby to convince him that he doesn't need to get "all naked" to go to the toilet. But I guess we can address that AFTER we get him out of the Pull Ups and into underwear.

This is the story of a haircut.

A toddler haircut.

It will keep you entertained while I am commando potty training this week.

Please pray for me. A LOT.

We have been begging Toddler to get a haircut for months. The last real one he got was in January from MIL and he looked like Jim Carrey from Dumb and Dumber. (You know uneven bangs and chipped tooth part.) He has refused a haircut since, and I can't say that I blame him - I mean if anyone had done a hack job like that on me I would have kicked them in the nads.

But he was starting to look like a girl and we really were sick of having to tag team wash his hair. (Read here: one parent holds wriggling wet squirming squealing pig like child while other parent rapidly attempts to wash child's hair without getting soap in his eyes.)

Today he agreed. For a price. One Mavis and One Murdock train car. It was on. I got out the clippers and then started shaving. Now we did good for about 8 minutes then he started screaming that I was hurting him. I pleaded and offered more toys and he said okay and cried only a little more. I did my best to make it look okay, and let him go.

Of course when hubby got home he wanted a piece of the action because it wasn't "good enough" and decided to go after Toddler too. (He really is a dumb ass sometimes.) So he tried. He lasted 2 minutes with the clippers then had to go at him with my knitting scissors. He even at one point was sitting on him - that is when I smacked him in the head and asked him what the Fuck he was doing. (I mean seriously, does he want a hippy for a kid or what? At that rate the kid will never ever get his goddamn hair cut!!)

So we went to Toys R Us to get the trains. But he found some Geo Tracks. Which are great toys for toddler boys. And the set was a great deal and better priced that the Thomas trains $49 for a set with tracks and 2 trains with a remote or $25 for 2 wooden trains. So he picked Geo. We also got a potty seat, and band aids and 2 Geo trains for Poop incentives because we are commando potty training this week and there will be rewards.

All said and done the hair cut cost me $92. And it still looks like the Jim Carrey cut he got in January. Maybe even a little worse. Except this time he has all of his teeth so it doesn't look so bad.

I remember kindergarten about as well as I remember most things. In bits and pieces. I loved it though. It was new and fascinating and so much fun. And I was lucky enough to have 2 teachers...not because I was a delinquent at an early age (I saved all the delinquencies up for college) but because there were three reading groups between the two classes and the one I needed had more people in the other class. So every day I got to go to the other room - to Miss Young's class.

The sad thing is that I can't recall my teacher's name. I remember that she was young, and our classroom was neat and tidy and things were sparse. But I remember Miss Young's room as being colorful and decorated with artwork from hundreds of students past and present, full of life and energy. It was exciting and warm and such a fun place to be.

Miss Young always wore her long slivery hair in a braided pony tail, and usually had a long flowing "hippie" skirt and blouse on. She also had some sort of bell bracelet on too. She was strict, but also kind and full of energy and life - the kind of teacher that you get a handful of times in your education, but the kind that stays with you for your entire life.

She taught me the excitement of reading. And that it was more about just Dick and Jane and their stupid dog Spot. That it was an adventure to places you wanted to go, and things you wanted to do. She inspired me to write and travel and create.

In grade school I read like a fiend. Reading almost daily a book or more. Thank goodness for Judy Blume and The Babysitter's Club series, also for the short lived Sleep Over Club series. Then in Middle School I graduated to Autobiographies like the Story of Anne Frank, Golda Maier, and of Course almost all of the books about the Kennedy's. In high school I wrote a lot and acted in school plays and musicals. But have to admit that my reading fever petered out with other interests taking over and things just being "more important" in my 16 year old life.

Even in college with reading and term papers and frat parties and Sorority meetings who had time to read for fun? And by the time I got home and was working a semi real job I met a man and fell in love and got married.

Then we bought a bankrupt business, moved to a new state bought a home and spent  9 years turning that into a successful company. And doing that and having a successful marriage - all while feverishly attempting to have a baby (with several failed attempts) does not make for good reading. (Unless you think that books on fertility and pregnancy loss are good reads. And if that is the case you may want to talk to someone.)

So why all the blabbering about a kindergarten teacher? Why all the stupid reading mumbo jumbo? Because I found out today that Miss Young died of a rare form of cancer.

Miss Young is the mother of one of my mom's girlfriends from high school - in a weird twist the very same high school I went to and graduated from. And hearing that she lost her mom made me sad, because this makes it the second parent she has lost this year. Losing a family member is tough enough. Losing a child is sheer terror. But I cannot bear the thought of losing a parent. So tonight as I type this my thoughts are with Laura that she can find some peace in this dark time, and that she knows that her mom did touch so many lives in the time that she taught school.

And Miss Young, wherever you are tonight, I am picking up a book - not a Thomas the Tank Engine book - but a real book for me to read for fun, and am going to start reading and keep reading for fun, just like you taught me to all those years ago.

I will miss you.

Yes, my friends that is correct, I fought the BBQ, and the FUCKER SINGED MY HAIR. But let's just start at the beginning.

I was awakened this morning at 5:30 by a screaming toddler, who could have rattled the door off the hinges had he worked a little harder at shaking it and a little less at SCREAMING like a homicidal MANIAC!!

I wouldn't be so upset but the Toddler has woke me up for the third time now from a lovely dream of Daniel Craig and George Clooney on some sort of 007 Wave Runner (cheap and easy product placement) Spy film type scenario...you know the one where I am the HOT bad girl...to get in bed with Daddy. Never Mommy, Daddy. And he always wakes me up when things in the dream with Daniel and George are getting GOOD.

But all kidding aside things went really well today. Daddy got rid of a LOT of the crap ass toys that Toddler won't let me get rid of - tis the power of daddiness - and they weeded and did other outside man work.

Tonight I was very concerned that we were coming into the dinner hour and I was at a loss of what to write about. (What, Faith at a loss for words? Someone better call someone!!) But of course not thinking - and that is my problem I have determined, NOT THINKING - I went about the dinner preparations while talking on the phone with a friend about MOMS club DRAMA in her state.

The french fries were in the oven, the condiments and buns on the counter, all I needed to do was start the gleaming stainless steel Sunbeam gas grill like I have hundreds upon hundreds of times. Because lets face it, if we waited for daddy to get home EVERY night to grill - we would be eating our own legs a LOT during the busy summer season!!

So, I opened the lid, (phone jammed between shoulder and ear jabbing away as always) turned the center knobs and pushed the start button....nothing. "What the FUCK is wrong with this now?!?" I kicked it and jiggled the propane tank...and then turned the burners off for a couple of minutes and then turned them back on again. Still nothing. Then I held the button ("electronic ignition") down for a little longer....all I remember is a giant orange ball, a huge burning sensation, dropping the phone, loosing my glass and screaming "WHAT THE FUCK?"

When I got to the powder room I realized what the FUCK had happened. My hair was singed in a GAWD Awful pattern, my nose hairs were non existent and the tip of my nose and my top lip hurt like hell. Fortunately nothing is seeping or blistered, and I being a hypochondriac  well prepared for emergencies had plenty of Neosporin on hand to rub all over it and inside my nose.

Hubby came down from "dropping the kids off at the pool" to investigate.

"What happened?"

"Um, I just burned all my Fucking hair off with the Damn barbeque!!"

"Holy Shit!! That looks awesome!!"

"So not Awesome!! I have to PAY to get this fixed...or look like an ass forever!!"

Once I got reoriented (well I am still a little screwed up from it) he joked that I could just tell everyone that I was in India and decided to try out the local hair salon. (Apparently they cut hair there by setting it on fire. Not appealing to me.) Not a funny joke, not a funny thought.

So check out the slide show of the singed hair do. I am going to have a cocktail. And we are going to COSTCO tomorrow....right after my 11:45 appointment with Kevin to fix this mess...to stock up on microwave food for the nights that daddy isn't here to operate the barbeque!

Usually I am full of funny and witty thoughts. But not today, I think that I read too many sad things today about Inflammatory Breast Cancer, (here) and how other people do indeed have much horribler situations than I do. (here)

(Yes, I know that Horribler isn't a word. No, I don't care.)

By knowing that people have really really bad things that they are facing makes me really really sad. Because that makes me just a rude ungrateful blabbering bitch who sits here whining all the time about "how bad" I have it. Will someone just bitch slap me already? Good Lord I so DO NOT HAVE IT BAD HERE....It is GREAT, REALLY REALLY GREAT. No one is ill, no one is living in poverty, no one is being beaten and those that have been beat down by addiction have worked really hard at beating it back.

So I am going to go sit quietly (allbymyself as Toddler would say) to say some happy prayers and send out some thank you notes that are long overdue. Whatever you have to be grateful for...go and be happy about it. And be thankful that at this moment it isn't as GODDAMN awful as you think that it is. And say a prayer to whatever God you worship for those who need our prayers....because there really are a lot of people out there that can use some superfluous prayers, and praying is cleansing for the soul.