Whatever Happened to Baby Irv....

One day, while sitting with The Kid at one of our favorite restaurants, we flipped over one of our dollars and this is what we saw.....

Not only do  the fate of tiny baby geckos keep me awake, but things like this make my imagination run wild.    

So many questions......

Who names their baby Irv?
Is it short for Irvin?
Was this dollar actually Michael Irvin's?
If it was Michael Irvin's, what did he spend it on?  Strippers?  Poker?  Cocaine?  Beer?
Whatever happened to Michael Irvin?
Who gives a baby a dollar and writes their name on it?
Does Baby Irv even know it's gone?
Did Baby Irv get so desperate for cash that he saw no option but to use his very first dollar?
If he did, what did he spend it on?

That's the one that really bothers me.

Did he take it to school one day  for show and tell and the school bully beat him up and took it and Baby Irv never saw his dollar again?

Did Baby Irv secretly bet on the ponies at the petting zoo and gambled away his milk money only to have to use his dollar to pay the third grade bookie or face a swirlie in the toilet?

Did he possibly  have to use it to pay for his Pixie Stick candy addiction or face an intervention on A&E with Candy Finnigan?

Did Baby Irv use it to tip that little floozy, Bambi,  in nursery school after she danced the Hokey Pokey just for him?

Did Baby Irv, thoughtlessly grab it accidentally from his piggy bank to buy a pickle at the bake sale, never realizing what he had grabbed... all in his thirst for that first vinegary sour bite?

Did he use it to pay off his library fine on his secret guilty pleasure book, Twilight, afraid his mother would make fun of him for his taste in sparkly vampires and tepid love triangles?

The more I think about it the crazy the scenarios get.    I hope that Baby Irv wasn't a grown up, who saved the dollar his whole life, and then literally when he was down to his last buck, used it to buy crack or cigarettes or a big, tall can of beer in a tiny brown paper sack.   That would break my heart for Baby Irv.

Anyone know what happened to Baby Irv?

Warning....This Post May Have TMI, But When Has That Ever Stopped Me?

Why is it that stomach viruses always strike at 2:30 in the morning?  

There I was sleeping like a baby, and suddenly I was awake, gagging.     Big Daddy was out of town, and I was out of commission.   After several hours of moaning and rushing to the toilet, the alarm went off and The Kid was up, getting ready for school.  Somebody had to take her to and from school 15 minutes away, so I threw on some clothes, made it there and made it home without having to pull over.  I celebrated that success with a trip to the bathroom and then a nap on the couch.  Aim high, people.   

The after-school trip, I wasn't so lucky.

The day had not been kind to me, and I had on pjs with no bra and no make-up.  I pulled my hair back in a messy bun, put on a baseball cap and my fashionista Olsen Twins/Paris Hilton owl-sized sunglasses, and set out.   My hope was that no one would recognize me.   I work there, after all, and my kid goes to school there.   I looked like hammered dog poop and felt even worse.    Kids can be cruel, and honestly, I didn't want to embarrass The Kid.

I got to school about 15 minutes early, because the line to get into the parking lot is ridiculously long and drivers are idiots.   I wanted to avoid all that, park where she could see me, and get home.

I was successful in finding a spot, rolled down the window, and  checked Facebook on my phone.   Suddenly, my stomach rolled.  Oh, crap.  I gagged and shoved the door open, reluctant to ruin the leather seats in the car.  

As I vomited in the parking lot, like some drunk teenager with my head hanging out the door,  I heard a honk.   I paused long enough in my retching, to look up.  There was a  man who looked like a cast member from  Honey Boo-Boo, in a huge truck, giving me the thumbs up.  I gagged again.  

"Woo-Hoo!" he shouted.  "Starting early.  Yeah!"

Seriously?   

There I am, a teacher at the school, puking in the parking lot out the side of my car, and a parent thinks I'm not sick, but puking drunk, driving my car to pick up the my kid?   And that it's okay?    And that it's something to celebrate?

Explains so much about my job. 

The Day Grandma Called Me a B****

My Grandma G and I at my college graduation, the day my brilliance
was confirmed.   Or maybe just my ability to take notes and regurgitate
information well.

Sometimes I get these obsessive/compulsive  urges.  I can't concentrate on other things.  I am consumed with thinking about whatever I'm obsessing about.  I feel like my life cannot move forward until  I GET THIS DONE NOW.  RIGHT NOW.

Recently, I had these thoughts about rearranging my living room.   I decided the other day that I need change in my life.  New windows for the house?   Different color pillows for the couch? Redo on the bathroom?   I decided the cheapest (FREE) change I could do was to rearrange the furniture.  

I live in a teeny-tiny 1000 square foot house.  Buying a lipstick means we have to rearrange the bedroom.  Buying furniture pieces or a picture typically requires getting rid of something else.  The problem with rearranging my living room was a china cabinet that was my grandmother's   There are only so many places a huge piece like that can go.   I thought of letting it go, but it was Grandma's.   I don't have much that was hers.  

Years ago, when my grandmother passed away from Alzheimer's, all her kids and grandkids, myself included, went through and picked out a memento or two of hers.  Grandma G had been a professional seamstress by trade and made beautiful wedding dresses and clothing out of  the business in her house.  We kids weren't allowed to go into her sewing room, but I remember always seeing that little tomato pin cushion with a thousand multicolored pins stabbed into it.   It reminded me of a tomato covered with ice cream sprinkles.  It represented Grandma to me, and when no one wanted a stupid pin cushion, I gladly brought it home.    

Grandma also had a hutch.  It was not something that I grew up looking at and associating with her.  It was something that she got after Granddaddy passed away, after I was older.  It wasn't expensive.  It's not incredibly stylish, but it was hers, and it was something that I could pass on to my daughter, someday, from her great-grandmother. No one wanted it, either, so I took it home. It now houses some milk glass from my grandmother and  some from both of Big Daddy's grandmas.  

Rearranging the room and moving that mammoth piece made me start thinking of Grandma G....

How she always seemed to have some sort of cake made....awesome lemon cake with thick lemony icing or a chocolate Texas sheet cake.   How she was the best cook ever, but how I hated the taste of her iced tea. How every morning she would always fix a cup of coffee with milk and sugar in a tea cup and saucer for her grey poodle, Spooky.  How she used Sweet N Low in tea, but wanted sugar in her coffee.   How she had the meanest Siamese cat I have ever met.   How she and Granddaddy used to always watch MASH and Grandpa would hum along with the theme song.   How she would let me eat ice cream for dinner when I spent the week with her.   The funny way she said "outside" and "furniture."  How, at my baby shower, the last time I ever saw or spoke to her, she called me a bitch.

Yeah.  That's right.   My sweet, little grandmother cussed me out at my own baby shower.  

In her defense, it wasn't her fault.  She was easily confused by that point, and there were lots of people there, so she was anxious.

There I was, bigger than the Hindenburg, swollen, unrecognizable, sipping on some sherbet punch and munching on a plate of cookies and those tiny tortilla roll up slicey things that people only make for showers.     Up walked my grandmother, drinking some punch.    She rubbed my belly, and said, "Pretty big party, huh?"

"Yep.  Lots of people showed up,"  I said, smiling.

"You know, I don't even know the girl the party is for," Grandma said, with a shake of her head, "but I hear she's a real bitch.  I can't wait to leave."

Then she drained her punch and walked away.   It was the last words she would ever speak to me.

I know it wasn't her saying those words.  I know it was the sickness.

At least, I hope so.  

Then again, maybe she was just saying what everyone was thinking.