Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is a mystery.
Today is a gift; that’s why they call it the present.

Oogway, Kung Fu Panda (2008)
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962)

Squeeze your babies and have a great weekend.

Scenario: It’s 9:27 a.m. Central Daylight Time. I am lying in bed with Rob, stretching and rubbing my eyes and discussing his impending trip to the YMCA with our four children.

My cell phone starts ringing from where it sits on my headboard. I check the Caller ID. It’s no one I know calling from nowhere I recognize. I let it continue to ring without answering based on my usual justification that if it’s important, they’ll leave a message.

Less than a minute later, my phone emits the familiar notification sound alerting me that the caller did, indeed, leave a message. I call my voicemail and hear a grouchy little old man voice*.

“Well I’ve called about a dozen times** but you never answer.” CLICK.

[PSA begins in 3...2...1...]

When my phone rings, whether it be my cell phone or my landline, the FIRST THING I DO is look at the Caller ID because — to be brutally honest — I might not want to talk to whomever is calling.

Even if I know that person. Even if that person is my own mother.

See, in the first place, I’m not a huge fan of the phone-talking-on concept. I’m certifiably antisocial in that way. It’s not you, it’s me.

In the second place, I typically have a minimum forty-seven balls in the air at any given time so there is a fairly good chance that right now just isn’t a good time to talk. Please to leave me a message and I promise, I will call you back eventually unless your reason for calling is very important or time-sensitive and then I will certainly call back as soon as I hear the message.

BUT.

If you call me and:

1. I don’t recognize your number, and

2. you refuse to leave me a message until you’ve tried calling a dozen times** with no success, and

3. I do a reverse lookup on you which discloses very little additional information except that you called from Ladue (St. Louis) Missouri using a Verizon Wireless cell phone, then

4. it’s NOT me. IT’S YOU.

Which would render your voicemail bitchslap totally uncalled for and completely asinine but no hard feelings since you probably just ran out of prune juice or something and also HAVE A GREAT THURSDAY! JESUS LOVES YOU!

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* I have no little old men in my life. My grandfathers have both passed and Hugh Hefner only has my e-mail address.

** I checked my call log and the number of times I have received a call from the phone number in question equals exactly three. Which, for the record, equals ONE-QUARTER OF A DOZEN.

Today, I want to start off by briefly exploring the topics of blog comments and stats. Those of you who already have a good working knowledge of those topics, as well as those who have no bloody interest in them may be excused to below the line of asterisks. Go ahead but quietly.

For the rest of you, I’ll keep it short and to the point.

If you visit my blog, I know about it.

See, I have a magical tool called a JavaScript installed on my site and its sole purpose is to take notes on the when, where, how long, and how often of your visits. Think of it as sort of a Blog Big Brother. And while BBB may not be able to tell me your actual names, he knows just about everything else about you. (And you should really get those clothes out of the washer before they mildew.)

Which brings me to our second and final point:

If you visit, you should say “hi” every once and a while.

Because I know you were here anyway and I do This Thing I Do for LITTLE TO NO PAY so your comments are sort of like compensation for my efforts. Look at it this way: My comment form is your wet cement. Go for it.

Thank you for your attention.

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One of my favorite writers is Susan Wagner of Friday Playdate. I like Susan not only because she is the smart, funny, sassy mom of two precocious little boys, but also since she feels my pain of living in the heart of tornado alley, albeit a couple of hours to the west of me and mine. Also, that when I comment on her blog she almost always shoots me a response via e-mail. LOVE THAT.

So yesterday, I read her latest post and commented, and she e-mailed a response and I responded to her response by telling her a little story. Except the little story turned into a big…..long…..drawn out….epic….novella and I’m pretty sure by the end of it Susan was rethinking her earlier position re: sending e-mails to that whack job Crash Test Mommy chick in Tulsa.

To the contrary, by the end of it I was all HEY! I JUST WROTE MY BLOG ENTRY FOR TODAY! WOOT!

Here you go:

My youngest, Katelynn, was complaining of her foot hurting all morning yesterday. And I looked and looked but couldn’t find any reason why it would be bothering her. When she finally worked herself up into actual tears I gave her half a Tylenol and planned to call the pediatrician if she wasn’t feeling better in an hour or so.

Which….how awesome that she can now swallow half of a real human adult Tylenol since she’s not even four-years-old, right? She just learned that little trick in the last week.

And I’m not saying she learned it when, around 2 A.M. last Thursday, she had no choice since the pain from a shoulder sunburn was about to kill her and we were out of children’s Tylenol (naturally, since they only pack 15 or 20 pills in the bottle to start with) and my husband was at work (again, naturally — he’s a cop and works four 10-hour night shifts per week and how my kids manage to be hemorrhaging or puking only on the nights he’s not home I will NEVER know) and I was just a little bit hesitant to make a trek out to Walgreens at that hour.

Also am not saying she got said sunburn on Wednesday when she insisted on playing out in the backyard in her two-piece and I couldn’t find the Coppertone and told her to just “stay under the trees.” Ahem.

Anyway, after taking the Tylenol for her foot she plopped down in a chair with her big sister who investigated and within two minutes had a diagnosis. Katelynn had a [HUGE] splinter [festering] in the side of her foot. Up around almost to her pinky toe not quite to her toe pit.

Not on the bottom of her foot where I of course had been looking.

And I know my nursing license should probably be revoked. Not to mention my mommy license. But in my defense, I had LASIK a few years ago which made me slightly far-sighted so I’m blaming my better than 20-20 vision.

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Quick note since so many of you have asked: We still have not found Pete. And still are doing everything we can to find him. And still cry just thinking about it. So still can’t write a full post to talk about it. But THANKS SO MUCH for your comments and letters of concern. Keep hope alive!