I think I've died and gone to heaven

OK, you guys know how Michelle from Peony Paperie designed my business cards for my Etsy store? Well, she was also cool enough to lend me the feather icon so that I could make my own custom fabric from Spoonflower! How cool is that??!!

This morning while I had some downtime (downtime: time I didn't spend doing laundry or cleaning the house like I should have) I put together a little first-timers design and sent it off to the coolio folks at Spoonflower for printing! In two weeks I should be holding my own Featherty fabric. I even splurged on a piece of linen/cotton blend with black feathers on it so I could make a sweet summer tank or camisole for myself. Like my own walking brand reminder.

Wouldn't it be cute to design children's clothes that somehow incorporate the feather? Maybe just in the facings or a pocket or something, but it would be there.

Then while I was on the feather high, I went ahead and ordered custom stitched labels for my creations from China. I knew they were in China by their address (New York with $25 shipping costs from Asia) but also, the description of the labels was kind of a giveaway: We are thank you for supporting US and some of you guys are really make challenge for us but we never surrender, we always to try our best to finish your orders in the highest quality.

It reminded me of my friend Angela's hilarious pictures of signs from her trip to Japan. And the signage in China that needed to be changed before the Olympics because it was embarrassing to the Chinese that their English translations were so bad?

But we never surrender? People, you make fabric labels. This isn't like when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. Nobody's life depends on it.

Well, somebody in the room I'm sitting in smells like poop, so I'm off to inspect diapers and make sure my husband hasn't soiled himself. Have a great Saturday night, y'all! I hope to be working in The Sweatshop later so I can share some of my new ideas and big inventions.

- H

Exactly what do week-old hotdogs smell like?

Apparently, my husband has "week-old hotdog breath" according to Cooper. He stayed home sick today and for the most part he was a doll until he woke up from his nap.

What is it about a nap that changes a child's personality from sweet and loving to evil and mean-spirited? You'd think they'd wake up feeling better but somehow that's not how it works with Cooper.

My husband went to give him a kiss late this afternoon and Cooper said "Ew, DAD! Your breath smells like a week-old hotdog!"

Hmmm....

Then this evening as my husband and Cooper were wrestling on the couch, he shouted "EW GROSS, DAD! Your forehead and nose is all greasy!"

At this point I asked him where he was hearing all of this, and he said "school."

He came to me while I was on the couch, carrying his camera bag that was clearly an offering from his imaginary restaurant.

"What do you want to order, mom? I have potatoes and mashooshee and...."

"I'll have some potatoes, and some mashooshee, then."

"Psshht! Nah, they're too spicy and they turn me into a robot."

Well in that case, I'll pass on the mashooshee. I have enough robots in this house.

- H

Ah, yes, the fever returns

Now my three-year-old has the fever. It's much easier caring for him when he's sick now that he can tell us what's wrong. He woke up at 1:30 last night with a fever, so I dosed him up with Motrin and he happily went back to sleep. This morning when he woke up he was warm so I dosed him again and we sat on the couch and waited for it to take effect.

While we waited, he held his forehead and said "I think there are bugs in my head. They hurt."

But within a half hour he was back to his old cheery talkative self, so I thought we were in the clear.

Yeah...not so much. His fever spiked again at 4:00. His eyes went glassy. His breathing got rapid. Fever fully back on board. Nothing else seems to be wrong and he's not complaining of any other problems, so I'm optimistic that by tomorrow he'll be good as new? Either way he's staying home with dad.

I did manage to get Soren's new tunic in the mail today! Sonja won the Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Day custom tunic and instead of having me make it for herself she chose to have me make one for her daughter, Soren. Isn't that a cool name? I love it.

I wasn't quite in the right frame of mind when I sent it off today and I forgot to take pictures of it first! Idiot. Oh, well, maybe she'll take some when it gets there and post them on her blog for us to see? (PLEASE?)

I think I need to hire a professional Organizer to come into my house and whip it into shape. Especially my sewing room downstairs. My fabrics are spilling over, the projects I've already cut out are intermingled with uncut fabrics and now it's a big mess. I don't have a ton of free time and slowing down to clean when I do get the time to sew isn't high on my priority list.

But tomorrow is Friday, and that means the weekend is upon us, so maybe I'll get a free hour or two and maybe lightning will strike my head and maybe I'll decide to spend my free time cleaning up my sewing room. Or pigs could fly out of my butt. Either way.

- H

I believe we are with child

I betcha there are some ladies (and one guy) reading this right now feeling like they may throw up in their mouth a little. Cause what if Heather is pregnant??!!

Nope. It's not me. I'm not with child.

One of our fishies is.

Clearly, the big yellow glofish girl is preggo. Either that, or she ate the snail (who has gone mysteriously missing, just like one of the sucker fish). She's suddenly gigantic in the belly and it's sort of dark.

What do I do with a million baby glofish? First things first, they needed a bigger house. My husband is the one who bought the first fish tank and it was only two and a half gallons. Anyone who's ever gotten serious about fishkeeping knows that's too small for a healthy tank environment.

Today I stopped at Walmart and doubled their square footage instantly. It's like they've won the Powerball and they moved into a glofish mansion or something.

I hope if she gives birth to live babies they don't eat them all right away. At least give me a chance to scoop them out in the net and let them grow in the smaller tank? But what if she gives birth to a big egg sac? That would be gross.

Why am I suddenly in the fish raising business? I don't know, I don't feel like I can just let them die. I feel like it's my duty to try to get them to thrive. I'll keep you all posted on when she delivers because I'm sure you're going to be thinking about her quite a bit. Yep. I know. Hanging on her every move.

Ah yes, very exciting stuff going on around here. Oh, and I wrecked my car this afternoon after I picked the boys up from school. Rear-ended a lady who was very sweet about it and kept telling me "these things happen, it's no big deal." I wasn't too upset about it, maybe I should have been. Well what are you gonna do? These things happen. Little fender bender at 5 miles an hour. The cop didn't even want to write up a report it was that minor.

So, I keep on keeping on. Yeehaw.

- H

I want my old lame life back

Yeegads, I'm too busy. I like being busy, but I like being busy with stupid silly things I've decided to do, not Big Important things I have to do because someone else wants me to do them or because they're the right thing to do. Yuck. The inner irresponsible teenager in me is screaming to be set free.

That being said, I'm mindful of my friend Marci's aversion to people saying "Oh my gosh, I'm so busy I just can barely breathe!" Which is sort of like the self-absorbed ninny's way of saying "Oh my gosh, I'm so important I can barely stand it!" Which is sort of like saying "Oh my gosh, I'm so full of myself I can barely fit in a room with another human!"

So, I'm not that busy but I haven't been able to blog a lot and it's bugging me.

'Why haven't you been blogging, Heather?' I knew you were asking that. So I did it for you.

Well, let's see....there was the trip to the ER tonight with my baby boy Griffie who probably should have been named Crash or something equally cool like that. This child's head is magnetic. So are surfaces that the head doesn't belong on, like the floor. Give him five minutes alone and he'll conk his head on something, usually hard enough to leave a bruise and usually it'll be right in the middle of his forehead.

Tonight, however, he had a great two-fer. We were outside playing.

First, he attempted to climb up on the grill. It was covered and all, but those vinyl covers are apparently a touch slippery so he fell head first into the twelve inch space between the grill and a big limestone step that leads to the garage. I found him yelling at me, upside down. Not a scratch on him that time. Whew! He quickly recovered his good mood and went about his merry way.

So I let my guard down.

Surely his one disaster of the day had already happened, yes?

I pulled up a chair and got ready to do some Computer Work for Work while he tinkered in the garage. Only this time, his idea of tinkering included pulling a child-sized motorcycle/dirt bike thingy on top of himself.

And so he and I were off to the ER. Because this time, he didn't yell for help. He screamed and cried and I thought he was going to die. My heart was in my throat, as was most of my GI tract apparently because even after we are all safely home I am suffering from the massive attack of trauma-induced GERD that happened when I glanced up and saw him laying under the motorcycle.

The motorcycle my husband bought my three-year-old son. Because most three-year-olds need motorcycles.

If you have or had a three-year-old, you probably didn't buy them a motorcycle, but you are a bad parent and totally clueless about the needs of developing children and you're way overreacting, Heather, that a motorcycle is unsafe and he's not going to be driving it anyway because we all know it's really for his dad who is stuck in some sort of arrested development.

My friend Sara is probably vehemently disagreeing with me right now, because her son probably has a motorcycle. But her son can probably drive it already.

The nice folks at the pediatric ER were happy to have Crash, Mr. Cheery Knucklehead in their midst this evening, even if it was only for an hour and he didn't need any actual care from them.

The doctor even admitted that he dropped his three children off at their mother's dental practice with ticks all over them today. Cause he took them hiking in the woods before he had to come in to work and they got ticks. So you see? Even ER doctors make stupid mistakes, but I bet he never bought his kids a motorcycle when they were three. I didn't ask him.

Well, that was tonight's adventure. The poor child had Hand, Foot and Mouth disease this weekend. I thought we were out of the woods with him for a while, and that is where I made a critical mistake. I will never be out of the woods with this one. He's the child who will scare the living daylights out of me every single day including the day he straps on homemade wings and attempts to 'fly' off the garage roof or something equally ridiculous.

- H