I'm Persuaded that:

Sunrises and sunsets are the earth's heartbeat.

"Sun Hands" by Local Natives

No thanks, Band Wagon

I guess I'm reaching that age where all of my friends from high school are getting married and having kids (not necessarily in that order). Within the past month, perhaps less, no fewer than four girls from my high school class have gotten engaged, and there is nothing funnier than the post-engagement pictures they post. Please note the crazed looks in the girls' eyes.

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

I awoke this morning to an absolute stillness. The cat wasn't crying outside my door, no cars were rumbling down the road in front of my house, and my mind was quiet. It was the kind of stillness that any conscientious human being would be loath to disturb, and as I lay there burrowed under my three quilts, the point was further solidified in my mind that there is no life before coffee.

The Grossest

This past weekend I babysat the FBI agent's three boys overnight while he and his wife went to a Christmas party. The boys are 12, 10, and 5 1/2. They're all really sweet though, so I didn't think they'd be any trouble. 

However, within the hour of their parents leaving, there was a crisis. The boys were playing basketball in the back part of the house with some sort of squishy, approved-for-the-indoors-type ball, when I heard all their thumping around cease, and the wailing began.

Figuring that they'd had some sort of spat, I rolled my eyes and made my way to the back room. There was Graham, the youngest, screaming his head off and holding a tissue to his nose. Apparently, he'd gotten hit in the face with the ball.

I took him to the bathroom and tried to calm him down while the other two boys told me what had happened, but when I took the tissue away from Graham's nose to assess the damage, blood gushed out. Then he coughed, and a stream of blood came out of his mouth into the toilet--exorcist style. This freaked him out, and he resumed screaming at the top of his lungs.

At this point there was no consoling Graham, and it was all I could do just to make a few swipes at his nose with a tissue. Then the gross part happened. When Graham choked on a sob, he breathed out sharply through his nose. This splashed blood all over the bathroom toilet, on the walls, and the floor. The bathroom decor was completely white to begin with, so the color of the red droplets made an even starker contrast to the linoleum than would normally be.

At the sight of his blood all over the bathroom, Graham freaked out even more and began to vomit everywhere. He wouldn't keep his head over the toilet, so a lot of it ended up in the sink as well as on the floor. It didn't help that he had just eaten less than 20 minutes prior either. 

When I finally got Graham quieted down, his bloody nose staunched, and his clothes changed, it was time to bring out the rubber cleaning gloves and face mask. The bathroom looked like a war zone, and guess who had to clean it up? Yes, me, the babysitter. It was, I believe, the grossest thing I've ever had the misfortune of coming in contact with, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to look at a hot-dog the same way again.