Of oddities , cuteness,fussing and stressing.

OK! I'm back again- Little stressed and worse for wear today- but I have cute pics, so all is well in the world.

Monday - Was all more stressful than it should have been.
A child full of artificial candy coloring and flavors should NOT be woken up early by the noise of neighbors trees being cut down.
She was SUPER fussy ALL DAY. Spending much of the time in a self implemented version of timeout sitting in her bed fussing
-Here,lets check on her:


"Don't laugh!you are fussing"

"I said don't laugh, you can't laugh and tantrum at the same time!"

(why does that always work?)(why does she look so big?)

At least she could be somewhat consoled in her fussiness. UGH- her tantruming has reached all new dramaqueen levels of muttering what almost sounds like " i want a new mommy"-cringe- I am not ready for this,thought I had a few more years before such things.
I spent the day cleaning. Ben was in town and hoping to intro us to his new girl when Ri got off work.
I ,at least wanted to vacuum tinfoil eggshaped candy wrappers out of my carpet before such a visit.I also managed to make some killer banana muffins-before those bananas we had rotted. Oh yeah, and I got banned from a hippie message board- THAT was funny tho.

A nasty storm was rolling in so we didn't really get to go outside and play. Ri called me that night to tell me we were actually under a tornado warning, there had been one in the town near us and the storm was heading our way.

Ri worked till 9pm (he only works at nalus on Mon&tues)-brought home chips and hotdog buns for a quick veggiedog dinner.

Ben came over with his gorgeous new girlfriend(can't remember her name-sorry- Illiana maybe?)- they made it in right as the storm that threatened all day finally brought some SERIOUS rain.
We chatted Rory showed them dozens of her toys and tried to get them to play with every game she liked- she loves her "uncle ben" .
They didn't stay terribly late- we were all tired. We will have to go hang out soon.


Tuesday it was still a bit stormy. Ri's boss called him and said they wouldn't open in that weather so he had a surprise day off.He let me sleep in a little bit and then decided we should go out somewhere.
Ripleys Museum(In st.augustine) closed pretty late, and we have been talking about taking Rory for awhile, so we decided to go there.
We sort of wanted to look around at real estate there(-sigh- a girl can dream, right?)
, and check out a discount grocery we had heard good things about.

We stopped at the dollar store on the way to pick up Rory a little toy- and made a deal she would get no other toy, and ask for no other toy that whole day...can't blame us for trying... besides ,he beloved Little pet shop toys are really cheap there.


no, I did not take this pic

Tickets were MUCH cheaper than we feared.yay :)

For the most part Rory said the museum was scary- but she really seemed to enjoy looking around.

Model carousel that cost more to build than a real one.



Giant lock made of locks



Voodoo doll , Rory liked it.



Matchstick pagoda



Rory thought this was AWESOME


a elephant ankle cuff- we couldn't believe how big..and a necklace made of dog teeth, which Rory really liked

The stuffed odd animals creep me out-but Rory liked them

How does a headless chicken "live" for months?


-there was a multi legged baby duck in there-



She said the statue of the largest man drafted scared her- a lot of the "oddities" squicked her out," me too kid,mee tooo".


-woohoo- we're skinny




Rory sizes up the tallest man


She thought these guys were cool...
..but the bear scared her.



I didn't get a shot of all the celeb life/death masks- they creeped Rory out.I thought it was neat to see what Arnold , Angelina ,and Lincolns faces really looked like in real life- or sort of real life.. .

I LOVE this room- the room full of odd carvings and crafts- Carved jade
How freakin' awesome is that?!?


a wreath, Rory liked it a lot,until I read to her that it was made of human hair.. I still like it.

It must take serious dedication to intricately carve an eggshell.

Rory did NOT liked these faces in the driftwood(sorry for the crappy pic) - but I thought they were neat.



This was carved out of camel bone:
We stood there for awhile trying to see all the little details in it- people,trees ,pagodas,birds,a bridge- crazy!

Rory loved this little pair of pliers made from a matchstick- she liked the entire miniature gallery section, too- I didn't get many pics of that .






Mummified cat


I WANT that mystery ball- soo neat


The moose(and its accompanying story of a moose who got stuck in a window and froze to death) freaked Rory out.


this whole section was too creepy for Rory...

but the painted chips were cool

Ohh! and she is STILL talking about the story of the ghosts- of two women that died in a fire in the castle that haunt it.
..and the cool mirror trick that showed the woman in the room- and then she disappeared-sppoooky!



...though, the spinning tunnel has always been the best part...


..it has been awhile since we have been to Ripley's.. that tunnel used to be the end to the museum.
Years ago we had went to Ripleys haunted house in gaitlinburg,TN- and the end of that they had a similar tunnel with lights- it was so much worse.We often lamented how much better it was than the old one..well,

they added one.(I know you can't quite capture a pic of that)- it is much more spinny- in fact there is a "chicken door" detour because the lit tunnel is much harder to walk straight through. We fell a few times- and ran back and forth across it a few times,too.
We made our way out dodging gift store "gimmie"'s and went to the huge log train car in the parkinglot


- that has a whole house built inside of it


Rory loved it...

We raced across town to a discount grocery store- one of Ri's coworkers told him they sell damaged goods from the whole foods store- OMG have I ever found mark down heaven!!
They were closing soon and a store with a hungry child is no safe place to be. I bugged Ri rushing him- but we scored arms full of 49cent bendy boxes of wheat gluten, and 99cent veg bullion, and Rory got a box of organic fruity cereal.Oh my, we are going to have to find a way to stock up there more frequently!
The child's growing hunger and sleepiness, added to Ri's hunger =grouchiness for all of us. ..
He was excited to take me to a rarely open veggie cafe in town- but I didn't want to go with a fussy child. Neither of us felt the other understood, and the tension only grew..of course then Rory passed out in the backseat, I knew she was tired!- and that woulda been hell in a restaurant with a waiter, and no escape while waiting on an order.
Honestly, as I sit here typing at 4 am Thursday I am still sick thinking about the stress that came with another family moment gone awry.
We almost went home.. in Rory's half sleep she begged not to go home. We actually ended up in the target parking lot trying to communicate(and failing a bit) while Rory slept.When she woke up he drove to GreatWraps. At least there we had no waiter, Ri ordered and I hid her fussiness in a back booth by the loud ice machine.After that nap and some food in her belly she was good as gold tho...ugh, even reading that paragraph I realize I sound scared of my 4 yr old. Yes, yes I am. Cranky people frighten me.

We decided to window shop around little shopping area- and yeah, smoke. (I know chastize me-it's terrible.)
Rory had a cup of soda so she was good to go window shopping. ..and really exicted to remember there was a Petco there. Ri picked out Noobs some dog food treats while we wondered around. Rory could hang out in Petco all night.
Everything in St.Augustine closes crazy early- we popped in publix and got the little bit of basics we needed then headed home.
Ri had to head to bed , he had to wake up early the next morn. Rory stayed up pretty late,but at least went down well before dawn (while I blogged ). Then I fought to make myself sleep, on the bright side at least my ear stopped being a bother.

I woke up well before Rory today---or what is now yesterday, I turned the tv up loud and ot her up though, a nice respectable 2 pm wake up- ughhhhhh

It was hot , stress still had me feeling yuck. I talked her out of a bike ride and into her pool and new bathing suit instead...
and when did my child learn to pose like a model??








We had an ultra lazy day. I was feeling major funk. I tossed together a super simple lazy lentil soup for dinner. Ri said he hadn't ate all day so I wanted to feed him something healthy, and maybe try to combat the junkfood in Rory's system.
I was thinking today, that her unequal pupil size isn't noticeable... but then she got tired, and now it is noticeable again:


Well, it's late , er, um early. I am going to take a nap-glad Ri has tomorrow off
PEACE AND TOFU CHICkEN GREASE,
BABYHELLFIRE