I was dreaming a very funny episose of Frasier about all the hilarious comedy that surrounds putting the dad on life support or something like that when I woke up suddenly to what sounded like our neighbor doing laundry at 5 am. Apparantly his washer was unbalanced because the whole house was shaking really hard.

Wait.

That doesn’t make any sense.

ME: Why is our house shaking?
KEVIN:
ME: Kevin, our house is shaking. Why is our house shaking?
KEVIN: Huh? (realizes house is shaking, jumps out of bed)

We ran to open the bedroom door – and it stopped. What the – did we we imagine it? It really did happen, right? We had both been so deeply asleep, that maybe hmmm. Well maybe not.

Eeek, what if someone had been trying to break in and we misinterpreted the sound as shaking because of being so sound asleep? Surely Mouse would have barked but then again, he was drunk. That’s right, we gave our dog valium right before bed so he was useless except to stumble into the bedroom door when called.

So, WMD in hand, Kevin checked out the whole house. He even went outside to see if anyone was awake next door, possibly supporting the laundry hypothesis. Everything was still and quiet. We had obviously made it up. Kevin came back to bed and we proposed possible Things It Could Have Been.

Loud music from a passing car, or a huge truck driving by, or maybe even an explosion far off. He went to sleep and I turned on the TV as background noise to try and drift off again. The weatherman was on, looking very excited, interrupting the people who sit at the desk, babbling about the Richter scale.

So we’re not crazy! The house did shake. They were talking to people on the phone from all over north Georgia about “what was it like”, and apparently everyone in the state except for me and Kevin figured out right away that it was a motherfucking earthquake.

I did it. Just like all mothers in the history of the world, as depicted in hieroglyphics on ancient Egyptian walls. This week I joined all parents, everywhere from African forests to Japanese megacities, performing the same universal rite of passage. The Druids did it. The Puritans did it. The American Indians did it. And as civilized as I like to think I am, I too could not resist the urge.

I took my baby to Sears to have his picture made.
http://www.tiffanyard.com/nico/april2003/sears/pose3.jpg
http://www.tiffanyard.com/nico/april2003/sears/pose4.jpg

We’re packing and sorting and hauling things off. It’s a big job because we’re pack rats and we have a habit of keeping the most random crap ever. For example…

Kevin’s favorite shirt of all time
Not sure if you can tell but it actually has holes in it, I think from some kind of acid he was using to make jewelry. He wants to throw it away but I secretly packed it.

Advertisement for a doll
I don’t know why but this scares the crap out of me.

Freaking awesome watch
It’s a Dukes of Hazard watch that plays that dixie song – do-do do-do-do, do-do-doDOdoot!

Sunday funnies<
Haha! Get it? Like um… yeah. Nothing like reading the sunday comics with your kids and running across something like this.

Jesus action figure
I actually have two of these. The sale price is what makes it so awesome.

Pipecleaner model of a friend from highschool
See there was this chick named Nili. Maybe you know her. Heck, maybe you dated her. Not that she was a slut or anything, I’m just saying maybe you did is all. Back in high school she was uhhhhh a little high strung. She yelled at me and Reema a lot because, well, because we were lazy smartasses and we deserved it. She was always running around everywhere, saying “I have to go I’m really late”. So one night Reema and I were working on a project. We were in trouble with Nili for being behind and not taking the project seriously, and she went home in a huff leaving us to pull an all nighter. So naturally we had to make this model of her out of brown pipecleaners. Drunk on sleep deprivation, we almost peed our pants laughing so hard making the pipecleaner Nili run around going “IHAVETOGOI’MREEELYLATE!!!!”

Maybe you had to be there.

Spice girls lollipop
This is the lewdest thing I have ever seen marketed to children.

So last night we went to Wal-mart. Nicolaus digs Wal-mart. There’s so much cool stuff to look at and those pretty flourescent lights OOoooooooooooooh!

We were buying vanilla scented candles because Alisha says the smell of vanilla makes people want to buy your house. Stupid people! Anyway, we were debating between French vanilla and good old regular American, gun-toting vanilla when suddenly Nicolaus started dancing in his carseat. It caught our attention because it looked so funny – like, what the hell is he doing? Then we realized someone had just turned up some happy motown music really loud over on the next aisle.

It was so weird looking – he was shrugging his shoulders and bobbing his head perfectly in time to the music. And grinning like an idiot the whole time.

I’m drinking wine so I’m going to ramble. To anyone who is pregnant or might be pregnant or is breastfeeding hahaha I get to drink and youuuu don’t. I was hoping that going a year without alcohol would lower my tolerance but I’m halfway through the bottle of white zinfandel and just feel a little fuzzy. I hope I don’t have to drink the whole thing. That would be embarassing.

My house is so clean you can hear it. The sound is like, like crinkling glass. The sound of little pieces of glass hitting eachother, only played backwards. Not on a record though; records have a warm crackling sound that’s a bit dirty. This is the beautful, clear sound of glass played backwards on a digital recording. The house is really fucking clean.

When people come and look at it I know they think it’s weird. It’s hard for me because this house is very personal, our little jewel box. And I know a lot of people walk in and go “who the fuck decorated this place? Vandals?!

I curse too much.

Nicolaus. Neee-coh-lahhs. I dream about him. Part of me is always thinking about him. He’s so beautiful now, he suddenly seems more awake to life. Not so much like a puppy, more like an actual small person (albiet one with considerable mental and physical disabilities). His new trick is you stick your tongue out and he grins and sticks his tongue out too. He now tries it on every person he meets. Today he stuck his tongue out at Mouse, another baby, and the nurse at the doctor’s office. He raises his eyebrows like he’s saying “heyyyyyyyyyyy…” It’s so freaking cute. Tony summed it up while playing with him one day “Man, they should sell these!”

I love the bitter taste of cheap wine.

We’re getting money back from our taxxes. A giant big wonderful pile of money. That’s a nice relief because I don’t make much money lately and we need to pay some things off. Tax laws are unbelievabley complicated. Why don’t ya’ll march in the streets and protest that? I guess it doesn’t lend itself to good slogans. “Simplify excessively complex tax legislation now!” Jeeez it’s unreal. But the nice lady at H&R Block got us a big pile of it back and it sets up this weird thing where you’re happy that of the money that the school bully took from you all year he realized he took too much from you on accident so now he’s giving a little of it back. Sure in the meantime you gave him an interest-free loan and he used it to do a bunch of drugs and stuff but now you’re all happy about it. And I am happy about it because we need the money. So, yay.

I always thought one day I might like to see what it was like to kiss a girl. Now that I’m a mother I think I somehow missed my chance. Of course that would be cheating so actually it’s been too late for like 6 years or something but for some reason I didn’t notice until just now. Oh well.

I’m becoming somewhat drunker now. I never tried marijuana either. I’m such a square. I’m going to be thirty next year, and I’m supposed to be depressed about that but as hokey as it sounds I’m looking forward to the next ten years. .I get to watch babies soak in the world. What could be cooler? I’d take the next ten years over re-doing my teenage years any any any day.

Once I saw a field of birds being chased up by a thresher. Maybe thresher isn’t the right word. A big farm thing cutting throught he tall yellow grass. The birds were small and black, like a swarm. As the thresher moved forward the swarm would swirl up out of the field and land a little ways ahead. But it kept moving, slowly slowly and the birds kept cycling up into a cloud moving and swirling back down just ahead of it. I’m looking forward to watching Nicolaus watch clouds of birds like that. I’m glad we’re moving to Texas. Texas has lots of those birds. i should go to bed.

Love and birds,
Tiffany