DeadpanAnn (old blogger version)

Tim is off work on weekends now, so I have been leaving him with Charlie while I run and get groceries on Saturday mornings. Saturday shopping sucks. The stores are packed, the roads are packed, and the stuff that was on sale for the week has been picked over by then. Plus I feel like I have to hurry because Tim's at home alone with the baby, and no matter how much they love them or how badly they want to help, there's not a man on earth whose butthole does not tighten a bit at the prospect of being left alone with a baby. I decided to go to Mal Wart instead of the grocery store this week because we needed some things that only the Devil's Playground has, like a replacement for the full length mirror that I broke yesterday. This morning while Charlie was napping, I showered and got dressed, made a grocery list, and got everything ready to go so that I could put him in the car and go to Mal Wart as soon as he woke up.

Well, when he woke up, his diaper weighed at least 10 pounds. While I had his feet over his head and was wiping his butt, he pissed on himself. And by "on himself" I mean he sprayed himself in the face, hair, and all over his clothes before I could get a wipey over his winky. I know that I should know better by now and always have Mr. Winky covered, but it's hard to keep it covered while I'm cleaning up poop. He's squirming and I'm trying to keep him from completely covering himself in butt mud. I have to hold his ankles with one hand (to keep him from smearing his socks in it) and wipe with the other, and that doesn't leave any hands for putting the cloth back on Mr. Winky when he squirms this way or that and it falls off. So instead of covering Mr. Winky, I just started trying to make the process as quick as possible.

I wasn't quick enough this time. Not only did he spray himself, but pee puddled under him and there was no way to clean everything up without taking him off the changing table. I grabbed a blanket, spread it out in the floor as well as I could, and moved him down there to clean him up and redress him. Then I cleaned up the changing table and wiped the piss off the furniture and the walls. (I can just imagine what that room must smell like to outside visitors. Between the diaper filled garbage can and the pissed-on walls, it's probably rancid, and I'm just immune to it.)

I got him dressed, announced to him that we were going to the store, and scooped him up out of the floor, still determined to make it to Mal Wart before lunch hour wanderers poured into the streets. Then I realized that his hair was wet, and it wasn't sweat. Shit. I can't take my child to Wal Mart with piss in his hair, even though I briefly considered it. Then I considered trying to wash only his hair in the sink, but that didn't make much sense considering that it was bath day anyway. So I went and changed into a t-shirt and started some bath water.

During his bath, he peed again, but this time he skillfully sprayed yours truly. It hit me in the front of the neck and ran down my chest, into my shirt, and onto my bra. Fantastic.

Half an hour later, Charlie was clean and dressed, I was clean and dressed, and we were ready to go. But by then it was meal time. You don't take a hungry baby anywhere unless you're a glutton for punishment. So I prepared a bottle and we sat down on the couch to eat. When he finished, he burped right away, and I said, "Great, NOW we're leaving!" I put him on my shoulder and carried him to the car seat. When I sat him down, his face, arms, and shirt were covered in spit up, and he had a shit eating grin on his face. I looked down, and sure enough-- the entire front of my shirt was soaked with thick white soymilk spit up. YUM! Screw changing him again, I thought. I just wiped him down and quickly changed my shirt-- for the third time today.

We headed to Wal Mart, and he was perfect the entire time. He likes going to the store because the lights and the signs that hang from the ceiling give him something interesting to look at. As we were being checked out by a young black girl who talked to herself and yawned forty times in the three minutes it took her to check our groceries, Charlie spewed again. I was able to contain it with a little blanket, but that made the fourth castastrophic and/or inconvenient digestive mishap of our day, and it was only noon. Bad luck from the broken mirror?

He seems to feel okay. He has perfected The Squeal, and has been wreaking havoc on my eardrums with it all afternoon.

Mommy's ready for naptime.

In case you didn't read it in the comments section of the last post, I'm thinking maybe I'll keep the name DeadpanAnn and just change the subheading. A few good ideas have been offered, but now I am feeling very uncreative for wanting to steal HM's "Mommy has a headache," and am trying to let it inspire something original.

Last Thursday, my mom, sister, nephew, and niece arrived for a visit. My bro-in-law came down the next night. It was a full house, and mommy really did have a headache. It's too bad you're not supposed to beat children. Some of them need it. But then, so do some adults. Don't get me wrong-- I was glad to see all of them. It gets lonely down here at the bottom of the continent. But damn. I guess I've gotten used to the peace and quiet, and peace and quiet are a distant memory with a hyperactive 10 year old boy in the house. I cooked a meal the first night we were here, but threatened to serve Nyquil the second night. I'm trying not to be too judgmental. My little redhead is going to be hell on wheels, I'm sure. I just hope I parent him well. Parent is not only a noun, but also a verb, you know.

Speaking of kids and their stubborn ways, Charlie's hard earned tooth never really came all the way out. It peeked through the skin, just barely, and then stopped. Now he seems to have another one working its way up. It's another bottom tooth, and I think I can see it just under the skin. He's running a low fever and is generally impossible to please, which is unlike Charlie. He's usually quite happy, so it really throws me when he is cranky for days on end.

The illness that Tim and I have had for nearly a month seems to be losing its grip. We have both coughed until our ribs hurt, and I had nausea from all the drainage AND my head has come pretty close to exploding a time or two. It's been getting better the last two days, although I am still coughing a little. I could've used some of that sweet, sweet Histinex that HM is always jonesing for talking about, but my state employee insurance had ended and my new coverage hadn't kicked in yet, so I didn't dare go to the doctor.

Mrs. C, not to be confused with Aunt C, gave me a call yesterday. Mrs. C is the lady who was supposed to babysit Charlie while I went back to work. She was having some major health concerns and told me at the last minute that she couldn't keep him, which gave me the excuse I needed to stay home with him and quit my job. Anyway, last time I talked to her she was afraid that she was about to be diagnosed with ovarian cancer because a CT had shown a giant mass on her lady balls. She had surgery and it turned out to be some rare kind of tumor, but not cancerous. She said she's going to start working again in a couple of weeks and wanted to know what my current situation is. I suppose Asshole License Stealer Principal would laugh if I asked for my job back, so I told her I'm staying home at least for a couple of years, probably longer.

My license is going to expire before I go back to work, so I've got to get my renewal stuff in line. Since I don't have a master's degree, I'm required to have something like 10 CEU's or 6 college hours since the date my license was last renewed. I have taken 3 college hours-- that History of Education class a couple years ago, so I'm just going to take another class to make it 6, then I'll be covered. Hopefully I can get my master's before I go back to work. They'll have to pay me more, renewing my license will be easier, and I'll be qualified to teach at a junior college, should I ever get my chance.

Screw an education degree. It's an easier degree to get than an English degree, but I'm sorry, that shit is boring. I think I want an M.A. in English. If I had that degree, I'm pretty sure I could pick up a summer class or a night class at one of the local junior colleges, and possibly weasel my way into a full time position from there. Those jobs are cake. A friend of mine has been teaching juco since she was like 27, and I can't believe how much easier it is than teaching K-12. It's my dream job, and I want to be able to find one before I completely burn out on the whole teaching thing. It's coming. I like teaching, but I already know I can't do it for 20 years, so I need to have a backup plan. Juco would be a nice one.

I'm going to take a nap before the infant Tylenol wears off and Half Squat starts raising hell.

A couple of years ago, the new-fangled edition of Blogger was introduced, and I desperately clung to my old Blogger account so I wouldn't have to deal with the changes. Change is not always good, you know. Recently I have attempted to make several adjustments to the look and feel of my blog, only to find that said adjustments were impossible to make to the old version of Blogger. Apparently, if you want to make adjustments, you must first make change.

In April of 2005, I started this here project from my mother's basement. I was going through some major life changes myself at the time. Having recently graduated from college and been fired from my first full time job-- in that order-- I decided to put my English degree to some use and start teaching. In the four years since then, DeadpanAnn has chronicled my life's journey, which has involved lots of changes. I have gone from unemployed basement blogger/wannabe teacher to employed non-basement blogger/actual teacher, from single to married, from childlessness to motherhood, from Nesbit to Yazoo Shitty to Hattiesburg, from teaching "at risk" kids to teaching "smarty pants" kids, from wanting to teach to teaching to being a stay at home mom. You get the picture.

At one point I had a remarkable number of loyal readers, but I was always a little nervous about who might be reading. Then one day I checked StatCounter and saw that someone at the Mississippi Dept of Ed was frequenting the blog, and that was the beginning of the end. I moved several times, and only a few of you managed to keep track. I became increasingly cautious, and the content of my posts became increasingly boring. I stopped caring as much, and the frequency of my posts as well as the quality of the writing has gone downhill. These days I'm sometimes embarrassed of what I've written when I go back and read a post that was never proofread before it was posted. It's moments like that when I consider shutting it down. I used to obsess over making sure my punctuation and grammar were perfect, that I had made the best word choice, and that the overall flow of a post was clear. Maybe a few years of reading 8th graders' essays has conditioned me to overlook more. Whatever it is, it bothers me, and I want it to change. Writing is the only thing I can do well, and here I am sucking at it.

Recently I've been struggling to respark the old flame, but I'm just not feeling it. I think part of my problem is that I'm no longer the bitch I used to be. I'm just not an angry basement blogger anymore, nor am I a teacher blogger at present. I'm more like a mommy blogger right now, and that's okay.

I considered giving it up, but I think the real end of blogging for me is still a ways off in the future. I enjoy writing about the things that happen in my life, however boring or interesting they may be during any given period. At some point, probably around the time I return to the classroom, things will take a turn back to Interestingville and the number of readers will increase again. Until then, a few of you will get some enjoyment out of whatever I do write, and I'll be grateful for the comments, however sparse.

So instead of hanging it up, I'm just going to accept the change and create a new blog. It will have the same address, but a new look, and I am considering a new name as well. The problem is that I can't think of an appropriate name. If you have any suggestions...

I have no idea when I'll do this. I've started to do it several times. Each time, I either changed my mind about the name and/or look I want, or just ran out of time to work on it and ended up scrapping it. I don't have the time to spend hours in front of the computer like I used to, so I need to have most of my ideas in order before I start.

Tomorrow I'll give you a fresh post. Until then, I'll be brainstorming for blog names and hoping you have some suggestions that will inspire me.

How's that for justice??

And here's something just for fun...

There's a creepy guy in my bedroom. He has a mullet, tacky gold chain, spiked hair on top, and apparently marinaded in his cologne this morning. No, I haven't found myself a mulleted lover to have redneck sex with while my husband is at work. He's fixing the ceiling. The ceiling that a roofer poked his finger through yesterday while trying to pinpoint the exact location of a roof leak. Said roofer was in the attic, and Tim was directly below him in the back. The roofer was yelling, "I can't find the spot!" Then a finger popped through the ceiling and he yelled, "Found it!" No kidding, Einstein. The roof problem wasn't a major one, thank goodness, and patching the ceiling is taking a lot longer than fixing the leak.

Speaking of redneck love, Valentine's Day was this weekend, and Tim did a good job. He always does. I got a dozen of the prettiest roses imaginable-- I mean they were really, really pretty-- and a ton of chocolate. All of this was presented in a very romantic fashion that I won't go into detail about. My husband rocks. I would even love him if he had a mullet. Probably.

Lately the bad news that's out there has been getting to me more than usual. The baby being thrown into the lake, the baby being thrown into a biohazard bag (in the botched abortion), and the nonstop string of doom and gloom headlines regarding the economy and the stupid things being done to fix it are just a few of the things bringing me down. Another kid missing in Florida-- on and on and on, the supply of depressing news just never stops.

I don't know if there's more of it lately or if I'm just more aware of it because of the fact that I'm at home all day now, but it's overwhelming me at the moment and I need to unplug. Last night I watched a new version of a tv show about homicide detectives that I am totally addicted to, and it really, really disturbed me for the first time. I realized that I'm voluntarily taking in other people's bad news as a form of entertainment. Why do that? My life is good. It's better than good, in fact, and I need to be grateful for it. It could change at any moment.

I've decided to turn off the computer and the tv for a few days starting today at noon. I'm going to spend a few days focusing solely on the positive things in life. I'm going to look at my son more and spend more time playing with him. I'm going to go to the library and find the happiest book I can find, and read it while the baby is asleep-- time I would usually spend online or watching the news or other depressing programming. I have a comedy here from Netflix that I'll watch, too. If I get tired of those things, I'll clean my house or find some other constructive activity. I'll figure out what stay-at-home-moms did in the days before internet.

My hope is that I can clear my head and get life back into perspective. I don't see this happening before Tuesday, at least. The would be 4 days, and I will probably go into some type of withdrawal before then, but I'll stay gone as long as it takes.

I have an idea for a new blog, a happy blog, and I will be starting it when I return.

I may or may not have taught two of the kids in this video, and they may or may not have been the one in the red and the one in the blue stripes. This may or may not have been THIS YEAR, which would mean that they may or may not be 8th graders. I may or may not also recognize every last one of them from the middle school campus, where they may or may not have been students last year and/or this year.

It's so encouraging when you can see them putting their education to good use.

All this crap about the economy is gettin' me down. No, I don't understand the intricate details of what's going on (I don't think the people at the wheel do, either), but I don't think I need to be an economist to tune in to the fact that we're screwing ourselves. Doubling the national debt in just a few months' time? How can this not ruin us? What happens next time we are attacked? How can we afford to defend ourselves with this kind of debt? Other countries aren't going to keep loaning us money forever. We're going to be dead in the water.

The thing that makes it sting the most is the fact that it wasn't terrorists or other self-proclaimed America haters who did this to us-- it was US who did this to us. Greed, greed, and greed, plain and simple.

This stimulus package isn't going to fix a damn thing. Did you watch Obama's speech the other night? He started the speech by outlining how it could create jobs, etc., and it all sounded very reasonable, very believable. Then one of the reporters pointed out that economists have said it would take much, much more money to really fix the problem, and asked him if that was true. He back paddled like crazy then, saying something to the effect of, "My job is to make sure that THIS money gets spent correctly." To me, it sounded like, "Well, yeah, but this is a great distraction for now and will help me cover MY ass later because nobody can say I didn't do anything."

Every time I see a headline about a bank going to Vegas or giving big bonuses to the very people who put them in this position, I want to shoot someone in the face. Shoot them. In the face. Their defense? "We have to keep our good talent!" WHAT GOOD TALENT? Or "None of THE BAILOUT MONEY was used for these bonuses." SO WHAT if it wasn't the bailout money-- you still took bailout money to keep yourself alive, so why the hell are you spending a single penny on bonuses right now?

What the hell is wrong with these people??? I mean, the greed is incomprehensible!

I don't even know how to write about this because it's so dumbfounding that I can't even collect my thoughts. I'm just blown away by the lack of common sense being displayed by the people who run the country.

We are f*cked, and let's face it-- we deserve to be f*cked for letting these shit heads have so much control.

Last night I started feeling icky, and from 8:30 to about 1:00 a.m. it went downhill to the point that I was spewing from both ends, if ya know what I mean. I took phenergan and lamodil, but it didn't help-- just made me tired, so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open while I was crapping my brains out. This morning my stomach felt a little better but my throat was on fire. My stomach has gotten sick again this afternoon, and my throat is still in flames, and I'm coughing. I spent all day trying to sleep when I could. I'm hoping Charlie doesn't get whatever I have, and that tonight isn't a repeat of last night.

My dad had a heart cath today and they found some trouble. They've put in at least 4 stints, and I'm waiting for a call any minute now with the full word on what was found and what his prognosis looks like.

First, I ran to the photographer's studio, thinking they were just going to show me Charlie's pictures on a computer screen and I would order some kind of package real quick. I didn't even park the car in a real spot-- just kinda pulled it up in front of the door-- because I expected to be out in just a minute or two. It wasn't that quick at all. The lady took me into a back room, put me into a comfy chair and told me to relax, a little screen came down out of a ceiling, the lights dimmed, soft music started playing, and I was presented a beautiful slideshow of all of Charlie's portraits. Wow. The pictures were awesome. I can't wait to post them here.

Forty-five minutes and $320 later, I was headed back to the house to get Charlie and go to the birthday party. When I got back to the house, I realized I had FORGOTTEN TO BUY A GIFT! Ugh! I told Tim I had to run to Wal Mart real quick-- a stuffed toy of some kind would have to do-- and asked him to stay with Charlie a while longer. When I got back with the gift, Charlie was eating. We didn't leave the house until 11:00, and the party started at 11:00.

It was fun. About what you'd expect for a 1 year old's party. She was cute, the other kids were cute, everyone thought Charlie was cute. The whole thing was perfectly cute. A good time was had by all.

At 12:15 I headed back to the house, calling Tim on the way to make sure he would be ready to go as soon as I got there. We managed to get on the road by about 12:35.

We were almost there when I realized that I had packed everything except the bottle and bottle liners. (I use the Playtex Drop-ins.) We left a bottle and nipple at his sister's house last time we were there, so I knew there would be a bottle, but the bottle is useless without liners. Charlie was already starting to fuss for his dinner, and I was freaking out. I didn't want him to come unglued and us not have any way to feed him. Everything I do is aimed at making sure his needs are met before they become so urgent that he feels the need to scream at the top of his lungs, because it drives my blood pressure up and shaves hours off my life every time he does that. Being stuck for an extended period with him screaming and no way to stop it? My own personal hell.

We went through several towns, stopping at every little Mom and Pop pharmacy we saw, plus a few Dollar Generals and Fred's. No dice. Tim had called his sister to make sure the forgotten bottle was still there, and she told us that his niece was on her way to Wal Mart anyway and we should just let her get the liners for us, but I was afraid she would have more errands to run that would keep her gone a while. I was envisioning us sitting in his sister's living room with a screaming, hungry Charlie, waiting for niece to return with the golden ticket. The nearest Wal Mart was going to add about 45 minutes to our trip, but I thought it was worth it to avoid having him come unglued, so that's what we did.

By the time we arrived at his sister's house, we had been driving for over 2 hours and I was in a sour mood.

We dropped Charlie off and headed to Jackson. We drove through Jackson and all the surrounding towns aimlessly for a while, and finally decided to eat dinner at a Mexican restaurant. There's a place called Fernando's in Magee where they serve these giant tacos in deep fried taco shells. They're awesome, and we order them every time we go there. So when we saw a Fernando's in Brandon, we went in and ordered the giant tacos. But they weren't giant, and they weren't awesome. They also gave us both unbearable gas, which super sucked since we were trapped in a car together.

After our less than spectacular dinner, we spent more time driving aimlessly. We drove by a movie theatre but had no desire to see anything that was showing, so we found the richest neighborhood we could find and drove around it for a while, admiring the mansions and fancy cars. Drove across the reservoir. Stopped at a Circuit City to see if we could get any deals in the going-out-of-business sale. (We didn't.) Then we headed back to get Charlie.

All total, we were in the car for over 8 hours. Eight hours of driving, just to go to Jackson and eat crappy Mexican food. What a big, fat, pointless headache! (Or stomachache...) We should have had a plan, I guess.

Maybe it was worth it, even though I don't look forward to driving that much again any time soon. Charlie needs to socialize with people besides me and Tim, and his Aunt and Uncle and everyone else who spent time with him enjoyed it immensely. And Tim and I learned a lot of things: You should always keep bottle liners in the diaper bag just in case, small town pharmacies are being put out of business by Wal Mart and Walgreens for a good reason, even the biggest city in our state is boring as hell, and you should never eat Mexican when you still have hours to drive.

Earlier in the week, Tim's sister told us for about the fiftieth time that she would love to keep Charlie sometime, and to just let her know if we ever needed a break. After the last time she said this, I told Tim to take her up on it next time she offered, so he did, and she agreed. She lives 50 miles north of here, and Jackson is only 80 miles north of here, so we planned to drop him off with her and spend some time in Jackson. We didn't particularly want to go to Jackson, but we do want to be Charlie-free for a few hours, so...

Anyway, a friend of mine from work has a daughter who turns 1 tomorrow, and she's having a little birthday party. We were invited weeks ago. I not only agreed to be there, but I said I would bring a veggie tray so the adults would have something to munch on. I'm committed. It starts at 11:00 a.m.

I also have an appointment with the photographer at 9:00 to view Charlie's portraits and place my order.

I also ordered a piece of furniture from Haverty's last week, and have to pick it up tomorrow. (It's just a nightstand; I wasn't paying $80 for delivery.)

I had forgotten all about the baby's birthday party tomorrow. I spent all day today wondering how I was going to try to get the nightstand and make it to the photographer's and still get out of Hattiesburg before noon. Then my friend called me, and I remembered the party. When Tim got home from work, I told him one of us had to go to Wal Mart and get a veggie tray for the birthday party, and that I thought he should stay with Charlie while I go to the photographer's, and he should go get the nightstand while I'm at the party with Charlie.

It suddenly hit us that our "day away" wasn't going to start until the afternoon and that we were going to have to cram everything into the morning hours to make it work.

The whole point was to get away for a few hours, and now we're having to juggle four or five different things to make it happen. We're going to end up spending at least 4 hours driving before it's done, and we don't even know what the hell we're going to do up there. Go out to eat? Go to a movie? It sucks that we have to drive the hour to her house, drop him off, then drive another hour to Jackson-- then turn around and repeat it a few hours later-- just to go to a damn movie or restaurant when we live in a place that has lots of restaurants and a gigantic movie theater. It doesn't matter what we decide to do because we're probably going to hate each other by the time we get to Jackson anyway. We'll be stressed out from rushing around in the morning, and then be locked in a car together for close to two hours. History has proven again and again that this has one guaranteed result: Me saying something snappy to him, and him sulking about it for the rest of the day.

Tim suggested we cancel, then changed his mind after realizing that his sister has probably been looking forward to seeing Charlie all week, and believe me, she has. So that's what my day looks like tomorrow. I'm bending over backwards to get away from it all.

I can not sigh heavily enough to adequately convey my complete and utter dissatisfaction with how this fabulous plan is unfolding.

It's really been hitting me lately how isolated we actually are from the people around us. My sister has tons of friends who she can call to come watch her kids at the drop of a hat. I have lots of acquaintances so I rarely feel lonely, but I have no close friends, and I'm not sure I'd be comfortable asking them to keep him if I did. I've always been a bit of a loner, and now that I'm analyzing myself I think maybe I keep people distant from me because I'm afraid I'm going to inconvenience them or something. Now that Charlie's here, I really need a better support system.

We're having a helluva time here in the McDeadpanAnn household. Charlie's got eczema super bad, including on his face, and he's scratched the hell out of his cheeks and forehead. I try to put little mittens on him before he goes to bed, but they usually come off when he wiggles his hands out from under the blanket I have him swaddled in. I find him the next morning with bloody scratches on his face and the mittens are under the blanket. If I don't swaddle him, he won't fall asleep. I've clipped his fingernails as much as I can. Several people have told me of the miraculous healing powers of various ointments and lotions, but I've had no luck with any of them. They work temporarily to stop the itching, but they wear off by morning.

He's also cutting a tooth, if you can believe that. He's been showing signs of it for a while now, and a few days ago I looked at his bottom gum and there's a white spot where a tooth is pushing its way through the skin. He's having fits with it, too. I'm giving him as much infant Tylenol as I possibly can, and trying not to think about the fact that we'll have to go through this 19 more times before all 20 of his baby teeth are in.

So we're dealing with a scratched up face and the pains of teething, but that's not all. He was having gas so bad that it was waking him up and he was screaming and grunting. The poor thing was inconsolable. I could barely keep him in my arms because he was kicking and flailing in pain. After a few nights of this, I switched him to soy formula, which seems to have helped. He still has gas, but it's not as bad and it's not causing him pain. The downside is that soy farts smell like a possum carcass that has been rotting in a sinkhole in Missouri for three days. Just this morning little Charlie was in the floor in his room playing (actually, he was staring out the window) while I put up his clean clothes and gathered the dirty ones. I noticed a rancid smell-- the smell of rotten eggs, perhaps. I searched the room high and low for the source. I tore the sheet off his mattress, dug through the dirty clothes hamper sniffing each piece as I went, and changed the liner in the garbage can next to the changing table, but the smell remained. Then I leaned down to play with Charlie, and just as my nose hairs started to curl up I discovered that the odor was emanating from his ass area. His diaper was clean. Soy farts linger, apparently.

I don't know if I can take him in public. People will think I'm the worst mother of all time with my bloody faced, angry baby who smells like rotten eggs!

To top it all off, his first appointment with the photographer was yesterday. (We're taking him at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months.) I searched all over the internet and all over town for the perfect outfit, and ended up finding one at an overpriced baby boutique in Oak Grove at the very last minute. I was afraid he was going to scratch his face up before the pictures, so starting about a week ago I started trimming his nails daily, put the tightest pair of mittens I could find on him, put Neosporin on his face to heal the couple of scratches he had, and even put hydrocortisone on his face at night. Within a couple of days, all the scratches were healed, and I thought we were home free. His sweet little angel face was going to be perfect for his pictures. Woke up yesterday-- the day of the pictures-- and he had three or four fresh scratches right in the center of his forehead. It almost looked like Charles Manson's swastika.

There goes my bid for Mother of the Year.

Every time I see a picture of Blagojevich, two questions come to mind: 1) Has the world ever seen a bigger douche? and 2) Where is his upper lip?