The dreads have taken over my hair. They are everywhere. Chunks are half dreaded. Some are nice and tight. Some seem to be breeding, with little baby dreads popping up around huger dreads. And still others are turning into super, mega, turbo fuck dreads.
There are still a few chunks of “regular” hair in between, though which means one thing:

It looks terrible.

I only have three choices for my hair each morning.

One…I can pull it back into a pony tail.

Two…I can pull it back into pig tails (my usual choice).

Or three…I can put a bandanna on.

Under no circumstances can I leave my hair down. It won’t work. I look homeless. This is really frustrating me for one very good reason and that is simply that I get headaches when I constantly have my hair either pulled back or covered. Pressure on my skull gives me wicked headaches after a few days so the fact that I * have * to one of those things makes for a very achy head and a very cranky girl.

I am finishing the dreading process this weekend, so help me Dog. Don bought a dreading kit on-line about a month ago. It was delivered to his apartment in time for my last visit there and we brought it back to Ontario. But did we use it that time? No. Did we use the next time? No. (And if he is reading and DARES to tell me that he told me to bring it into the living room again, I’m going to flip out! Because he promised me over and over again to help me but never did! And the things we did in the living room were NOT conducive to dread lock making!)

So * this * time, I’m making him. We are going to use the damn kit and we’re going to get this finished so that I can stop either covering my hair or pulling it back into pony tails and pig tails (unless I want to, of course and there’s every possibility that I will because I look pretty dang cute in a bandanna and equally cute with pig tails). I think a few episodes of Six Feet Under should help things along. That and a chastity belt.

I’ve got some news! Some really exciting news! And no, it doesn’t involve either cow’s milk (what the fuck was I thinking?!) or the washing machine (even though I’m itching to give an update on that fucking thing and the fact that it’s apparently in cahoots with the oven because IT won’t heat up past four hundred degrees and yes, I’ve flipped the breaker switch several times. This house is out to get me. Or this house is out to get me out). No…this is far more important news.

Michael walked yesterday.

I can hear your hoots and applause, I swear! This is * so * huge and I haven’t been able to stop grinning about it since it happened. He is about twenty months old and has worked SO hard to get to this point. I swear, having a child with any kind of developmental delays or physical disability makes you appreciate each and every milestone, no matter how small, that much more. So when it’s a pretty fucking huge milestone, it tends to feel like your chest might explode with happiness.

He took about five steps in the direction of the window seat in the living room without holding onto anything. In typical Michael style, no one was watching him (except for me, of course, from the other side of the half wall in the dining room). He didn’t make it to the window seat to grasp onto whatever it was he had his eye on. Instead, he tumbled to the floor in a heap but it was still * five * independent steps!

Since then, he’s only taken two or three very hesitant steps on his own and, again, in very typical Michael style, he won’t do it on cue or let you help him or force him to do it. He’ll refuse. And because Michael will never be “normal” (God, I hate that word and the implications it has had for the two boys in my life that I love the most), he won’t get up like my daughters did and start walking around the house. It’s going to be as gradual and slow as crawling and rolling over were for him. This is something that’s been frustrating me lately, not because I want him to hurry up and not because I’m not okay with the pace he’s learning at but because everyone else seems to be frustrated by those things. And if one more person asks me, “Is he walking, yet? When will he walk?” I might just scream. Because, you see, for me, it’s like they’re saying, “When will he be normal? When will this be over?” And I’m tired of making people understand.

Sheesh. That was a rather long rant considering that I started out happy!

It’s damn cold here in Janet Land. I put a fire on last night and went to bed warm and cozy. I woke up in the middle of the night (and thought it was morning till I looked at the clock) freezing my Canadian ass off. This morning was almost unbearable. The girls wore their winter coats to school, it was that frosty outside this morning. Old Man Winter isn’t too far off, it seems. And I need a new jacket. Badly. The red fleece one we bought at Wal Mart is just not cutting it. And the ancient black fleece jacket with the broken zipper needs to be put out of it’s misery. I have a winter coat but what I really need is a jacket that I can throw on to go outside. There’s no way in Hell that I can afford a new one someplace, that much is obvious. But I’m hoping I might be able to swing a second hand one at Value Village. I’m going to try to get there today, after I run the last of the errands with Michael later this morning. I’m not feeling too good about it, though, to be honest. Because Michael still needs a snowsuit and with winter at our heels, the girls need winter boots. Budgeting for a jacket pour moi, even a second hand one, might just not be in the cards.

And there is so much to do today, it’s ridiculous for me to be sitting on the computer, yakking away about nothing! Because…in case you’ve forgotten (and how could you possibly?)…I won’t be going to bed alone tonight! Woo hoo! Don will be here before bedtime and I’ll have a warm body to curl up next to tonight and I’ll be surrounded and maybe even talked to sleep.

And I just realized, right this very minute while I was blogging about not going to bed alone tonight, that I never changed the sheets on the bed after Don left last time. That’s kinda gross. I’m usually pretty diligent about that but each morning when I contemplate changing them, I can’t bring myself to wash his smell out. But he probably doesn’t want to sleep in his own smell and he will smell up a clean set of sheets just as nicely so that should be the first thing I do.

And there’s the cleaning. The “pride cleaning” , I call it. Just enough so that nobody realizes how we * really * live. Ha.

And then there’s the primping. I think I’ll wait for most of that until after I put the kids to bed. It’s really just hair removal that needs doing. The feet are still pretty fresh. Toenails are still pink. But some buffing might be in order.

And the shopping, which I already mentioned. I’m hoping to get back onto the Fenugreek and Blessed Thistle train soon. I’ve neglected the herbs and the pumping for a good couple of weeks now and I miss it. So I’m going to start up the regime again, which means a trip to the health food store. I need to look for peppermint oil there, too. Did you know that mice apparently hate the smell of peppermint? I’ve been sprinkling some under the sink every time I take out the compost or empty the recycling bin but now my sprinkling has caught up with me and I’m out of peppermint oil. And then I have to hit up the grocery store because first of all, we have nothing for dinner tonight. Emma has requested pesto penne and I have neither pasta nor pesto. And the baby needs milk for his ba-bas and Don needs cream for the coffee.

So, really, I have to go.

But just one more thing….

Gwennie mentioned that she thinks my disdain for coffee the other morning and my craving for milk a few hours later might mean that I’m not alone. It has got me wondering. So I will also stop at the drugstore to buy a pee test to take in a few days, should Mona not grace me with her presence before. And I will surely keep you posted.

That would be something, wouldn’t it?