A Tall Girl's Adventures in a Tiny World

...yet they keep on loving us: An allegorical (but true) story When I got out of the shower this morning, I noticed Sweet Boy's bedroom door was closed. I heard him in there, playing and singing, and thought nothing of it. Until I heard, "Oh, kitty, don't move kitty, stop it, stay still!" Uh oh. So I opened the door and discovered Sweet Boy stuffing our 13-year-old cat, Pitino, into his stuffed animal pile in the corner of the room. He was pushing Pitino down, while Pitino tried to scramble back up to the top of the pile, eyes big and black, ears flat, only to be covered by another few stuffed animals. I knew Sweet Boy meant no real harm, but I figured this was as good a time as any to reinforce the whole Pitino-is-a-living-creature concept, and explain that stuffing him into the stuffed animal pile could hurt him badly, maybe even kill him. OK, so maybe "kill him" was a little over the top, but I needed to make the point. And the point was made: Sweet Boy p...

[Warning: What follows is a whole lot of "poor me." I won't be hurt if you choose to just skip this and hop over to Perez Hilton or some site more interesting. Or, feel free to comment something along the lines of "Suck it up, you whiny brat, there are thousands of people dying in Haiti now. Your life is just fine."] I am low on patience and compassion this morning, and though I feel a little bad about that, I need to vent a bit now. My husband, who is also my best friend and companion through good times and bad, has a nasty head cold. You know I adore him and I'm sorry that he feels awful, bt I'm also a bit jealous and grouchy that he can lie in bed moaning for two days because he has some congestion pain in his ear and head. I probably should be doting over him, making him homemade chicken soup and rubbing Vicks on his chest or something. But no. I'm griping. You know why? Because not only do I have symptoms of this same head cold, including a sea...

As you may have heard, there's a baby coming this way. Soon. In approximately 10 weeks, to be precise. Which is awesome and blessed and amazing and exciting. But really freaking expensive. Which makes it also scary as hell when we're just about getting by financially in our current family state. But scary makes us think, right? Scary makes us evaluate what's important, consider what we can live without, brainstorm creative ways to make it work. So over the last couple months, Big Daddy and I have been contemplating all the many ways we can cut our expenses in order to afford another child in daycare (and all the diapers and clothing and food that comes with another person) but without causing too much personal hardship or lifestyle change. There are the obvious things, of course -- no more eating out, suspending the gym membership that we so rarely use, putting vacation savings on hiatus, paying off small debts to free up monthly cash -- but we live pretty lean anyway so it...