Fries With Mayo

If you have been following this blog for a while, you may wonder why there was a huge long pause and then suddenly I came back and there was a toddler in my stories.  As most of you know, I was, in my other life, previously a single dog lady with a side-helping of cats. All of a sudden, fate threw me a curveball and life changed in every way. Now, I am also (I still have aforementioned dog and cats) a single adoptive mother of a splendid baby boy, who is actually now a toddler.  It was a private adoption and I will spare the lad's privacy by not telling you the circumstances surrounding it, but suffice it to say it was a huge life change.  The lad, whom, for the time being, I referred to as "Meatloaf" due to his gargantuan size (he was 22 lbs. at less than 6 months), was born in December 2013 and came home from the hospital with me. People's reactions varied to the news, but mostly, everyone sweetly said things like, "Holy (expletive), M!  You (expletive) ...

One of the good things about being a pet owner before being a parent is that you get the opportunity to sometimes practice with parenting tools, such a cabinet locks, ahead of time.  Now, you might make a guess that the dog would get into the trash or something, or maybe into the pantry cupboard, and this is why I would need the cabinet locks, but you would be wrong. Luckily for me, Bad Cat is about as bright as a sack of rocks... or maybe a sack of broken light bulbs, because we know  how bright those are.  Unfortunately, Good Cat is blessed with above average cat intelligence and can open all cabinet doors using strange combinations of head banging and paw flipping.  This in itself would not be a problem if a) he didn't open the linen closet and b) Bad Cat didn't love to pee on linens. So anyway, cabinet locks.  Yay. Good Cat, as I've previously mentioned, has a splendid and hearty appetite, especially after he has indulged in a good hit of catnip. ...

They say the truth comes from the mouth of babes.  This may be true, except that sometimes, lies also come out of the mouths of babes, and then everyone's so busy believing trite platitudes about the truth that they assume the lies are truths and awkward awkwardness ensues. This came to play the other day (and several times since) when I went to the wonderful world that is Walmart.  Dear Sweet Son was in the cart, charming people with his winning smile as usual, trying to grab energy shots (which we know toddlers need quite much) off the shelves of the checkout line. As we got the the cashier, DSS decided to woo two middle-aged female employees with his great charms.  They succumbed instantly and began cooing over him in broken English (and I say this with love, as someone who spoke broken English for quite some time), patting his bare feet (bare due to the bizarre toddler need to instantly remove all footwear), and patting his adorable buzzcut.  He smiled his sm...