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I have an aunt who’s fighting hard to kick Cancer’s butt and send it home crying to its mother. She became my aunt when I married Dan 4 years ago and I instantly loved her. She just felt like my family. She is an encourager, a finder-outer, someone who wants to know everything that’s going on in your life and make you feel special – minus the sugar shock often associated with such people. Her killer sense of humor also helps.

Tonight I checked my cell phone messages while grocery shopping and there was a message from Aunt J, congratulating me on the success of my blog and telling me how proud she is that I am part of the family. She told me how much she loves me and how proud she has always been of me. To have a woman like her leave me that kind of a message brought tears to my eyes, in the grocery store. I guess she’s trying to send me home crying to my mother too.

I will never delete that message.

I have a few messages that have touched me in that way and I have saved them until a move or job-change has forced me to erase my entire inbox.

It got me thinking about all the talking, emailing and instant messaging I do every day. I send letters and thank-you notes by snail-mail as well. Words, words and more words are constantly spewing forth from the DYM.

I want to leave more messages that won’t ever be erased.

Correct that to read more fun.

I have some practice under my belt.

Elections for Grade 5 student body president. We write names on pieces of paper. The teacher counts them in her head (Jeff Probst could learn a thing or two about counting from Mrs. Rung) and then lets us know that I lose. So the boys didn’t like the pink frosting on my campaign cupcakes. Big dealy-o! The defeat is quick and nearly painless. Like a lip wax, just rip it off.

Senior Year of College. I’m up for a College of Fine Arts Award. We finalists embarrass ourselves in front of a panel of professors. They talk behind closed doors. A week later I get a runner-up thingy at an awards ceremony and proceed to take my date out for ice cream. We have no second date. I think he ran off with the winner.

Last night JT and his posse of BoB Award death marchers (a moment of silence to weep for their lost sleep and possibly lost minds) put up the official voting system on the site.

“Sweet,” says I. I will vote for my favorite blog.

I proceed to do so.

Up pops a results/body-count vote tally mechanism of death.

The silent scream.

The not-so-silent scream.

I say a quiet prayer that they will close the voting tomorrow. Watching these votes come in will be like watching my own demise…. in slow-motion…. on the internet…. in front of thousands of people.

Now, I’m not asking you to make me the Seabiscuit of the BoBs, but for the love of string cheese, please don’t leave little Katie out on the school ground getting her butt whipped with cupcake frosting smeared all over her hair, while thousands of 5th graders look on.

Basically, what I’m asking is that you don’t leave me hanging with one vote….cast by someone living in the greater Seattle area…..who shall not be named.

As my husband and Mr. Trump repeatedly remind us, “losing” in a contest of this
nature is not a loss, but a tenth-place finish in a large group of amazing contenders.

Yes.

And still I beg for mercy.

No problem, you can borrow my Ultimate Chopper. You may also borrow it to make babyfood, but it just doesn’t have the kahones to do spinach. Sorry.

This offer brought to you by late night feedings with Laylee, hours of infomercials, and a chef, yes, a chef – named Tony.

It was late. There was lactation, yawning, flickering blue light and a chef’s hat. I distinctly remember the chef’s hat. A small person was eating me and Dan sat stoically by my side.

The knives, the glorious knives.

Shining, chopping, slicing tomatoes, meat, steel pipes, sweater-vests, various pieces of metallic currency.

All for the low payment of $3.86 every fortnight for the next 13 years. The amazing deal that would only last for 10 more minutes. 9…..8……

I switched the channel.

Me: Those are lame.
Dan: (staring straight ahead) Yeah.
Me: But they make them look kind of great.
Dan: Yeah.
Me: So manipulative.
Dan: (casually) I have the 800-number memorized.

This started a chain of events, now beyond our control. Chef Tony knives and other kitchen apparati grace the kitchens of several family members and friends.

I can now puree a brick….but again, not so much with the spinach.

Congratulations, interrogations, this, this, and now “The Twinge” is back.

But, I like you all. I’m just skeered, and I don’t have much info yet. Peace, yo!

It’s elementary, my dear Daring One, but you will need to wait 90 minutes to be seen.

Rumor has it that a new Peds office is going up 3 inches from my front door sometime in the next 3 days to 10 years (the grapevine is amazingly inaccurate, I find). So I wanted to check out the doctor who is rumored to be moving here.

Magoo’s had a cough for 2 months, so I thought, “That’s a good excuse to see this guy. What the heidi-hay? Why not spend an hour in a germ-infested flu chamber?”

Scene:

In the waiting room, a poor lady loses her marbles. She’s pulled her kid out of school, gotten a babysitter for the others and she’s been waiting forever. It turns out they double-booked the doctor and we are scheduled to go in at the same time.

She calls someone on her cell phone and freaks out.
She talks to the receptionist.
I try to lighten the mood. I guess I’m not that funny.
She calls someone on her cell phone and freaks out.
She talks to the receptionist – LOUDLY.
We all feel bad for her but….WOW!
She calls someone on her cell phone and refers to me, saying something like, “Of course SHE’S not freaking out. Back in the days when I just had little kids at home, I could spend all day in the doctor’s office and it would be no big deal.”

(This is funny. I guess now SHE has a life or something. Phew! I’m sure glad I don’t.)

I’m actually not freaking out because it won’t change anything, people are giving the marble-less one crazy cukoo-eyed looks, my kids are enjoying the fish tank, and I feel strangely that I’m getting my comeuppance for my tardy laster-time at the doctor’s office.

This is a different doctor, a different office, and a different practice, but aren’t they all somehow in cahoots? If they put a big fat red flag on my file in one office, I bet alarms are going off in doctors’ offices all over the state when they see my number on the caller ID. This woman is a late-ish person who must be punished. And so I wait.

After an hour and a half, they call me back first, even though babysitter-can’t-keep-the-kids-anymore-her-daughter-is-missing-phonics-cell-phone lady arrived before me. Her mouth flops open and she makes a sound like, “Gahgk!” and shakes her head. I beg for mercy. I beg them to take her back first.

She softens, her face returns to normalish and she tells me it’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for her. That is sad.

The reception staff and the entire lobby (seriously, the fish and furniture included) breathe a collective sigh of relief.

I think the doctor, who turned out to be a freaky-genius mastermind of medicine, apologized approximately 43 times for the wait and proceeded to pace back and forth asking questions about my family and the state of our health.

The interview ended with a pause, a clasping of hands and then, “I have a theory, and if you’ll permit me to look in your daughter’s ears, I predict that her round of antibiotics has not worked, that her ear infection is still there and that your son and husband (not present) have sinus infections.”

By Jove, he was right!

As I left, the nurse thanked me for my patient’s patience and laughed that they would put a gold star on my chart. I stopped dead in my tracks. “No. Seriously. Please put a gold star on my chart. It would mean a great deal to me.”

She could tell I meant it.

She said she would.

I will be checking.

Just came back from a totally fun and wild baby shower where it was discovered that nearly all of us are afraid of mirrors in the dark, I was deemed the most likely to be a fun drinking buddy (if I were ever to try alcohol), and we were THIS close to playing stiff as a feather, light as a board…..er, light as a feather, stiff as a board.

But that’s not what this post is about. That is for another day. That is for the day when I post about Karli taking me on a fun girl’s getaway and then letting me sleep alone in a dark room with a wall made entirely of mirrors and a “wicker bed” (read this – tinder box with a mattress on top) pushed up against an electric heater…..Ah, memories.

Back to the van. This was probably the most fun we’ve had with comments. There was much of laughter and much of “discussion” as we “narrowed it down” to 20 and then we were stuck and couldn’t go on.

This was when I stopped the awards process to ask you all for ways to save our marriage. I kid. I kid. It’s all in jest.

And the name is………… dun dun dun…….Vincent Van Gogh (Vinny for everyday use).

Thanks to GINGER for coming up with the winning name!!! Go by and check out her site Joyful Woman. She’s a real “upbeat lady” (to quote Groundhog Day) and she rocks.

We picked the name for its artistic and historical significance, for the fact that the van’s ear…er…side mirror was gimpy when we purchased it, for its Rah-Rah-bility (go-Van-Gogh!) and because it’s just a flippin’ cool name all around.

For the memories and for those of you who want to pick over the table scraps, here is a list of all the names. The first paragraph contains our VERY favorites but we liked pretty much all of them. Thanks for playing.

Sparky, Art Vandelay, Ichivan (Ichiban means #1 in Japanese), Jean Claude van Damn, OyTota, Vandemonium, Ralph, Van Go, Van Winkle, DYVA (Daring Young Van is Awesome), LAMAR (Laylee and Magoo’s Awesome Ride), La Chaussure (Chaussy)

Lucy (in the sky with diamonds), The Golden Ticket, Toddler Tanker, Miss Shirley Van de Haulin’, Hugo, Solid Gold, Gold Rocket, Kid Rocket, van Kong, Van Helsing, Murphy (murph), Vincent van Gold, Golda MyVan, Van Halen, Goldie, Bob, Vantastic, Vanna Gold, VanDanner, Henrietta Sugarcookie, Miss Piggy, Double Dog Dare, ad-Van-tage, Van-dal, Fiesty Sheila, Biff, Scriganesh, Kiki, Vanessa, Goldie Van Der Van, Marvin the movin’ Mormon Van, The Rocket Sled, MidasMobile, Yellow Dart, Quick Nick, The Sube, Flying Flobbit, Cultured Cruiser, Ralph, Vanna Gold, Mortimer the Minivan, Vantasy, Frank, Skiffington (skiff), Sandy, Marmaduke, The Silver Bullet, Petunia

Laylee: What’s this?
Me: It’s something special.
Laylee: What IS it? Is it an envelope?
Me: It’s a special paper for your baby.
Laylee: What IS it?
Me: It’s your Cabbage Patch Kid’s birth certificate.
Laylee: Is it in an envelope?
Me: Yes.
Laylee: OH! (pulling it from the envelope) What IS it?
Me: It’s your baby’s birth certificate.
Laylee: Iiiiiii think it’s a big napkin.
Me: That’s why you don’t have access to the family records.

Dan: That’s bloggable.

We’ve all done it. Sitting around a table at a wedding luncheon, engagement party or reception, we’ve given advice to the happy couple. I for one have next to no recollection of the advice that was given to me and my husband around that table.

Do you? The wedding was a joy and a blur and listening to Great Aunt Ida tell me about what carried her marriage through The Depression got lost in the moment.

I’d like the advice back now. So, Aunt Ida and anyone else who’d like to participate, if you had to give one piece of advice to a newly married couple, what would it be?

The one that really sticks with me and that has served us very well in our marriage is – Never put each other down, even in jest.

I hear too many people calling their spouse lame, lazy, uncoordinated, chunky, a terrible cook, ha ha ha just kidding. Wasn’t that funny? I just said my wife was stupid and unattractive in front of other people, but I didn’t really mean it, get it? Get it? It was a joke.

Um…..yeah.

What advice do you have that could save all of our marriages and put Dr. Phil out of business?

*I did not choose this Tip topic because Dan is lame. He is not lame, even in jest.

My mom just called to see if I was still alive because I haven’t posted to my blog in over 24 hours. I am, in fact, alive. I’m not even sick yet. Slightly twisted maybe, but not physically ill.

As DY Dad wastes away to a shell of his former self, slurping chicken soup, blowing his schnoz, and saying incoherent things about server configurations (oh wait, that part’s normal), Laylee and Magoo are rapidly passing childhood milestones.

Fact – 7-month-old Magoo can now walk if you hold his hands and guide him forward. He looks like a cross between a Mussolini-style soldier and a cute fat ball of pudge with newly unleashed robotic mobile capabilities.

Fact – Laylee drew a person on her magna-doodle yesterday that looked surprisingly unlike a pile of mangled spaghetti. Not only did the specimen look semi-human, it actually looked a lot like a 1st trimester fetus, complete with arm-buds, leg-buds, blob-like cranial structure, and (she said) pants.

I don’t want to jinx things by mentioning the other milestone that we’re noticing, but it has to do with the fact that she is entering the realm of the persons with three years of agedness under their belts and the terribility seems to be waning. I will update you on whether this process ever completes itself …maybe after she leaves for college.

My mom always said she loved us all but she loved us more at different stages. If we asked who her favorite was, she said it was the one who needed her the most. Tonight, my family needs me and I am all a-tear with the joy of it.

Dan is pretty much walking death. He is having body and headaches so bad, he can hardly walk. I have been nursing him with Gatoraid, chick-flicks (he can’t fight back when he’s like this), and readings from S. Morgenstern’s The Princess Bride.

I joke about the death, but seriously, when he got up, asked me to pause The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (no I am not making that up), and moaned his way to the little boy’s room, I had this horrible feeling that he had meningitis or an aneurism or something and while he was about his important business, I was fighting back the tears and planning how I would pack up our stuff to move to my mom’s house with both kids in tow when he kicked the bucket.

When he came back, I told him of my concerns and he promised not to pass away….ever.

Then Magoo woke up in a state of sad sadness and he sat between us, all cold, clammy and pasty like his dad and we watched the rest of the movie. Magoo summoned the strength to dance (bouncing and flailing, really) to the girl-power songs and Dan and I both cried like babies during the touching parts. (Dan says he only cried because he was so sick, but then that’s a theory we’ll never be able to test, now will we? If we watched it again and he remained dry-eyed, I’d say it was because it wasn’t the first time he’d seen it. Maybe some evening when he’s well, I’ll whip out My Girl and see how well he holds up. I cried so hard I was snorting during that movie.)

To give him the benefit of the doubt and to protect his manhood, I will say that I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen him cry since we met (and I only have 5 fingers on my right hand, unlike Count Rugen). He must be really sick.

After I got him tucked into bed with his sprite-spiked Gatoraid and Tylenol PMs, I went to Magoo, whose crying had become a frenzy. I held and rocked and cuddled and loved him in the dark quiet of my living room. The fireplace flickered and he climbed up and down my stomach, nuzzling me all over and moaning happy, contented moans. Eventually I broke my big fat stupid rule and nursed the pathetic little guy to sleep.

Now I miss him. I miss my boys. I should go to bed. I’ll be the next victim of the disease, I’m sure. Magoo’s big enough now (over 2 years younger and only 5 lbs lighter than Laylee) that he should be rocking me to sleep when I come down with it.

This sentiment hit home. I read it right after putting him down.