I ran across these two photos completely randomly last night. This was the first time I had seen them within a short enough time frame to realize the similarity. I put them side by side and couldn’t believe it. I guess the more things change, the more they really DO stay the same!!!

A friend of mine just sent me this photo, taken before Miss ~T~ and Secret went to live with T’s Dad.

So… I’ve had a couple people email and IM me asking about Secret in the past few days and it made me realize just how little I blog lately. An aside to Janet in NC, owned by Teddy: I didn’t respond to your IMs because I was offline and didn’t receive them until several hours after you left them.

The Divine Miss ~T~ has gone to live with her father for a year and she took little Seeky with her. They spent the summer with my folks, as usual, and then went “home” to T’s dad’s place instead of coming home. It’s been a weird transition, since the longest T & I had ever been apart before this was a little over 4 weeks. The worst part of the transition was for poor Snick though. He MOURNED. He’s used to T going away for the summer, but this time all her stuff and her furniture went with her. He mourned her and Seeky for a few weeks. He kept looking for them and crying. It was really awful, but he finally adjusted to our new routine. T came home to visit, sans Secret, for Labor Day weekend and he was SO happy to see her.

So, anyway, that’s the reason I haven’t written about Secret for awhile. The good news is, that my concerns about her adjusting to being an only dog were unfounded. She seems to have really taken to it and a playful side of her personality has emerged. She’s also apparently taken QUITE a liking to T’s father.

And now you know… the rest of the story.

I ran across this tonight when I was looking for something else. This is one of my very most FAVORITE pictures of Miss ~T~.

Go T! Go T! It’s your birthday! It’s your birthday!

For anyone who doesn’t know already… this is a big one. Miss ~T~ is a TEENAGER today!

I never get any work done when she’s home sick from school. Yesterday, ~T~ (who’s now known as "Miss ~T~" btw) stayed home from school with some sort of stomach thing. She was miserable all day, which meant I pretty much didn’t hear anything from her. Today is a different story. She’s on the mend and she’s IM’ing me CONSTANTLY. A certain blog friend is home from work today and IM’ing me also. My productivity is at an all time low at the moment. On the other hand, I had these gems to LOL at so far this morning:

[12:51] Miss ~T~: I’m so hungery
[12:51] me: so go eat
[12:51] me: hungry not hungery
[12:52] Miss ~T~: ~T~ is cooking
[12:53] Miss ~T~: Should I leave water in instead of pouring out??
[12:53] me: ?
[12:53] me: you should do it however you usually do it
[12:53] Miss ~T~: These are the questions that haunt me
[12:53] me: LOLOLOL

AND

[12:57] Miss ~T~: Seek is licking Snick again
[12:57] Miss ~T~: She stopped
[12:57] me: I love being able to see when there is someone on my blog. it is very cool.
[12:58] Miss ~T~: I see blog people
[12:58] Miss ~T~: Ahhhhh
[12:58] me: LOL
[12:59] Miss ~T~: He he
[12:59] me: when did you grow up and get so funny?

This is ridiculous. Black Jack, Missouri has a city ordinance that prohibits more than three people from living together in the same house if they are unrelated by blood, marriage or adoption. Wait… did I read that right? I did. WTF??? From Reuters:

Olivia Shelltrack and Fondray Loving and their children moved from Minnesota to Missouri earlier this year, buying a five-bedroom home in the tiny community outside St. Louis.

Shelltrack and Loving have lived together about 13 years and have two children together, along with a 15-year-old daughter of Shelltrack’s from a previous relationship.

Black Jack, a town of about 7,000 that prides itself on a city Web site for its "character and stability," refused to grant the couple and their children an occupancy permit for their home because they do not meet the definition of "family" as set forth by the city, the complaint alleges.

The full story is here and here.

Putting aside for the moment the complete obnoxiousness of legislating who can live together, I have a couple questions…

1. Don’t they meet the criteria anyway? The dad is related to two of the kids. The mom is related to three of the kids. All of the kids are related to each other. There’s no way you can pull three people out of the group and not have at least two of them be related to each other by blood.
2. If that isn’t enough, my next question is… why is this couple not considered to be related? I don’t know about elsewhere, but the family court in New York State considers you to be family if you are "related by blood, marriage, or child in common." They have two kids together! That makes them family.

It just makes me crazy that this family that has been together for THIRTEEN YEARS is being told they aren’t "family" when I’m sure there are plenty people in that town that fit their narrow definition of family but aren’t nearly as stable!!!

(PS Don’t miss out on the blog birthday party going on in the previous post. Everyone is invited!)

Uh, yeah. Six weeks. By myself.

My mini me is in Europe for the long weekend (with her dad) and she feels a LOT further away than when she just went uptown to spend time with him.

This isn’t QUITE the furthest we’ve ever been from each other though. According to Google Earth (which totally rocks, btw), she is 3,317.72 miles from home right now. The furthest apart we have ever been was 3,849.12 miles in March of 2000.

This whole fake firefighter halloween rape thing has me going crazy. I usually tell my mini me about these sort of things, because I want her to be aware and be careful. With this one, I’m not sure how to approach it. I want her to be careful, but I’ve always told her she can trust the good guys. The white hats. The guys with badges. Her dad was a firefighter when she was born and a FDNY EMT for most of her life (until recently). We have close friends that are police officers. I’ve always felt comfortable telling her she can trust those guys. But now I have to worry about whether she can tell the white hats from the black hats!!! AUGH!!!

A friend just called me and told me about this story. Sometimes, I want to lock my daughter in her room and never let her out. There seems to be more evil in the world than I can ever warn her about.

Hoax Caller Fools Fast Food Asst. Managers into Strip Searching Employees

I meant to write about this over a week ago. Time seems to race away in front of me. I can never catch up.

T had a sleepover. I’m sure that is not an extraordinary thing for the mom of a preteen girl to write, BUT:

• Our apartment is REALLY small.
• I’m not great with kids in general.
• There were six of them.
• Did I mention that our apartment is REALLY small???

It’s amazing that I didn’t have a nervous breakdown from having six pre-teen girls running madly around our teeny, tiny apartment. Not only did I not freak out, but everyone seemed to have a good time!

I think maybe it was all the sugar.

We had greasy fried chicken for dinner and that was the last semi-real food we ate for the next 24 hours. For some insane reason I decided to bake chocolate brownies (from a mix, trust me, I can’t cook to save my life). A couple of them went to the deli with me and we bought ice cream to slather on our brownies. We all pigged out. It was great. They stayed up ridiculously late and in the morning they had cinnamon pop-tarts for breakfast. Then - and this part seems pretty brave (or stupid) in retrospect - I herded the whole pack of ‘em (by myself) to the AMC in Times Square to see a movie. (The Corpse Bride, which did not live up to expectations re: Tim Burton films.) They had popcorn and sodas during the movie. THEN (you didn’t think there could be more sugar, right?), as we were leaving the theater one of them spotted the COLD STONE CREAMERY across the street. We got amazing (not small) ice cream and took it home. After we finished eating, I collapsed into a sugar-induced semi-comatose state. A couple hours later their parents started showing up to take them home.

Not bad, eh?

I recently initiated my daughter into an age old female tradition.

Ask any woman in the modern world what you do when you are (1) starting your period AND (2) angry at and/or missing a significant other. 99% of them will tell you to do what T and I did a few days ago.

(Yes, I know T is young to be "missing a man" but we did this a day or two after her dad moved to Europe. That counts!)

I bought two pints of chocolate ice cream. (Yes, TWO. One for her, one for me.)

We sat down with our ice cream and two spoons.

We ate till we couldn’t eat anymore.

T is home! T is home! My daughter just got back from a six week vacation. I got a text from a friend as we were leaving the airport last night. It said “U r mommyrific again! Say hi for me.”

(And yes, Snickers went insane when he saw her. I think he thought she was gone forever.)