Floods, Plagues, and Other Signs of End Times.

There are times when the fact that my backyard is a giant downward slope is annoying. When I am offered a free motorized toddler car, but know it would never make it back up the hill. When I want to set up a kiddie pool on flat ground. When trying to build garden boxes. When the garage at the bottom of the yard floods.

Today I am very happy to be at the top of a hill. To know that if our house floods the rest of Durham is like 20 feet under water — aka, our house is not going to flood. Our crawlspace gets wet sometimes, and the garage does take on a lot of water, but our house is dry.

So far we still have power, though if it is going to go out it’ll probably be soon, seeing as how my phone isn’t completely charged, and we are currently running the dishwasher, washer, and dryer.

I’ve been through quite a few hurricanes and tropical storms, and wind-wise this one is nothing. At least this far inland. But man, this is a lot of rain.

If I have to build an ark, the following creatures are hereby excluded from entry:

Mosquitoes
Roaches
Lice
Chiggers
Ticks
Bedbugs
Earwigs
Stink Bugs
Donald Trump

***

Poor Rowan is sick. Again. He has a fever and is a sad, pathetic baby. He’s spent most of the day alternating between sleeping, crying, and just staring while snuggled up to one of us. The sweetest bit of it is that he has clearly started saying, “dada.” I thought he was only babbling. He was screaming in my arms, and saying “dada dada dada.” When I walked past Zach he practically launched himself out of my arms to get to his dad, where he settled right down and went to sleep. He has repeated this several times in the last couple of days. It’s such a lovely change to have a kid who is willing to velcro himself to someone other than me.

We’re on at least the third illness in the last five weeks. I’m using FMLA to care for him, which means my paycheck is sad.

Of course, he is the only one who hasn’t gotten his flu shot yet because CVS requires kids to be 18 months, and he is 17 months.

Lorelei had an epic fit the other night because I would not take her to get her flu shot right that very second. She told me she was “GOING TO GET A FLU SHOT RIGHT NOW.” Had I been transported to some freaky alternate universe? No, I’m just too good at bribery. My deal with her is that if she gets her flu shot she can buy a tube of lipstick, which I always regret instantly when she paints her entire face. I also bought a big palate of bright eyeshadows to use for Halloween, which means she is walking around looking like Mimi from The Drew Carey Show.

I have a Trump piece coming out in Scary Mommy tomorrow, which scares me a bit. Crazy people are crazy, and Scary Mommy posts tend to stir up a fair amount of activity on my Facebook page. I’ve locked down my personal page to be far more private in anticipation of Trump fans getting angry.

I had a post as the very first post on Today.com! I try to be all cool about it like, oh yeah, of course I had the top post on Today.com. No big deal. That sort of shit happens to me all the time. The reality is that I do things like email my therapist and freak out a little because WHO THE FUCK’S LIFE AM I LIVING?!?! Is “fuck’s” possessive? Does it get an apostrophe?