Written 12/20 but the net was down

Emma is at a stage where the only thought in her mind is "why?"

She is so full of questions, it is completely dizzying and hilarious at the same time. She questions every single thing that is happening every single minute. "Why are we here? What time is it?" (she's 3!) "Where are we going? Why are we going there?" She wants to know absolutely everything.

A few weeks ago, someone slid into Mark's car at a stoplight during a bad snowstorm. This past Monday, he had to take it in for bodywork, and use a rental. While we were arranging everything, we both thought of how much Emma was gonna freak out about the new (rental) car. We could anticipate about 80% of the questions she would ask. "Why do you have this car? Who's car is this? Where is your car? Why?"

And we were right on target. With each question, Mark would explain "remember when the man hit daddy's car, in the snowstorm, and now daddy's car has a bobo?" (not booboo, bobo.) and "now the people were fixing it, and they gave daddy this car, etc etc etc." Everytime she asked about it...(several times each cartrip) she'd call it "The man's car". "Why do you have the man's car?" "Where is your car?"

And she is so into Christmas right now. We talked tonight about how there is only 4 more days till the day that we open all the presents, and she was literally squealing.

We decided to just put a tree up at my house, and leave all the presents here. *but* We wrapped all the presents at Marks house, but Emma never saw us. So the other day, we had wrapped so many that I couldnt carry them all on my way out to go to work, so I left one big one in the middle of the living room floor. Mark said the next morning she was so puzzled, and kept asking him "do you have a tree?" "no". "Why not?" "Cause we are having Christmas at Nell's house". Then a brief pause. "Do you have a tree?" "no, why?" "why do you have a present?" Shebang. She was so stymied by this lone present with no tree. The two must go together, don't you know? Feh.

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When you go to the store late at night, it's a totally different experience than going at any time during the day. The customers are different, the workers are different, too. I had to go to Safeway tonight because Mark was suddenly without diapers. His jeans were in the washer, so I was elected. Anyway...the people in the store were insane. There was a very cute guy ahead of me in line, I wanted to flirt..but didn't. Not really.

The people in line are always the same, just varying degrees of insaneness. There always a huge fat lady, a cute couple, a single guy and an old man. Am I right, or what. C'mon. And the stuff people buy late at night is weird too. Here I am, buying diapers and a 12 pack of diet coke. That's a little funky. The guy behind me was buying eggnog and a reeses. I think that's totally whacked. Which one did he come into the store for?

Oh god! I just remembered something SO funny. The other day we were in Kmart by Marks house. The lines were long, and of course they didnt have enough lanes open. The one we picked was cursed. Only two people in front of me. Not bad. Buggies not totally full. Cool. Customer #1 suddenly becomes a problem when an item doesnt ring up on sale like it should. The clerk calls for - whatever - and we wait. And wait. And wait. Finally he just takes the womans word for it, and rings it up.

Customer #2 should be drawn and quartered within an inch of his life. His buggy appears mostly empty. Then, he pulls out this stack of greeting cards from hell. It's huge. Reams of paper. Millions of trees died. The clerk even said, "wow, thats a lot of greeting cards".

When you buy Greeting cards, especially if you buy a few, you always turn them over in the envelope so the clerk can scan it. Don't you? I know I didn't invent this. This guy had not done that with one single solitary card. The clerk had to turn every single card over, slide it out from the "V" of the envelope, and scan it. BLEH! When the clerk was done, it was $91 in cards. The clerk couldnt get over it either. "What are you gonna do with all these cards?" The guy said "My wife is gonna be out of town for a couple of months. OH MY GOD! I would kick my husbands ass from here to hell and back if he did that to me. Gimme some fucken air.

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What about the people in your building. If you live in any kind of multiple family dwelling, you know what I mean. You single family homeowners can skip this. You wont get it.

The people in my building. I don't really know any of them very well. Probably the person I talk to the most is my upstairs across the hall neighbor. I think she lives alone. She's about 55 or so, but looks pretty spunky. She told me my overhead lamp was on in my car once. I thought that was pretty cool. When we are scraping ice off of our windshields every morning, she talks to me. I have no idea what her name is. On halloween, she told me to make sure Daniel came up to her door. The neighbor that lives directly behind me (our kitchens back up to each other) chewed me out once. I think Daniel had chalked something nasty in front of her door, or something. I made him go clean it up and they've never talked to me again.

Rob used to live directly downstairs. He moved across the way to building 1, and we still go over there a lot. When he first moved in, he had a mess of guys living down there. Turns out they were ex-XFL football players. Now some idiot lives down there that bangs on the ceiling when we close the recliner, while sitting in it.

I would go out with the guy right above me. He's cute. Married, and nosy kids tho. Feh.

That's it. Just needed to get all that out of my system.