Thursday, June 23, 2016

Doctor's Orders

I had a followup chit chat with the doc this morning after a couple months away from her office. This past month, especially, has been filled with things that have convinced me the Universe does not want me on a diet. Some of these things have included:


*Requesting low carb options at a required work event and being told since I'm "not diabetic" they weren't "required to accommodate" me. They accommodated me by including yogurt (full sugar) and fruit along side the five varieties of pastries. I accommodated myself (after some bit of sweating) by taking the elevator to an on-site eatery and purchasing some scrambled eggs with a side of hard boiled eggs.

EGGS FOR DAYS

 *Having my luggage hoisted gingerly off the x-ray belt at the airport and my unmentionables tossed about because the gelatin powder and bullion cubes I packed as backup protein sources tested hot as explosives. Only initially, apparently. The swabby thing was okay. But the first test showed it as "green powder which is obviously explosives." Fortunately I quickly forgot about this ordeal when I settled into my seat next to Mr. Verizon himself.
*Repeatedly listening to my children say, "Ewwww, mom that tuna is soooooo disgusting. Do not get anywhere near me with it." 


Things like this kick my anxiety into overdrive and I'm left thinking, "why am I even doing this?" I also can't just pound a jug of wine to wash away my jitters since liquor makes my blood sugar spike.

But let's back up. Because the food thing? The food thing I can talk about. I will talk about the food thing with anyone who wants to ask. Why? Because I spent most of my life obviously in the dark about food. Well, not just about food, but about how every body is different in how it handles food. And mine, genetically, is screwed. So if you and I were to have a convo about this? I would tell you that what I eat may not be what is best for you, and that anybody who tries to tell you OR SELL YOU otherwise is a fucking liarface and you should run right the hell away.

But this past month a couple other things happened that I didn't so much talk about. Other people have. A LOT. And I have been reading. And watching. And listening. And crying. And thinking. But writing about it? What is there left to say that hasn't been said?

So today:

Brock "Rapey Pants" Turner and The Pulse Nightclub shooter who doesn't deserve a name.

When Turner's sad excuse for a sentence came down I wasn't one bit surprised. At all. We The People put so much stock in our athletes that we are completely willing to turn a blind eye to their deplorable shenanigans, especially when they're perpetrated by rich white kids.

We know this. We have lived this. I hope when Turner is released that he is immediately hit by a train.

I accepted a ride home from a youth dance in a group where we ended up at a local park. It was cold and I wanted to stay in the car. My friend and one guy got out and were talking near some playground equipment. The athlete unbuckled his seatbelt and slid over to me.

"So are we gonna do this or what?"

This fuck.

This fuck had never given me the time of day. This fuck had only ever gone out of his way to make me slightly miserable in the six-ish years we'd been students together. I laughed at the notion. He didn't take kindly to my rejection.

"You might as well, because I'm gonna tell everyone we did it anyway."
 This asshole is still walking around this town like he's some kind of gift to this planet. Did he get in my pants? NO. I spilled out my car door and told the other two yahoos that I needed to go.

Was he the only one to pull this shit? NO. It would happen time and again, they'd isolate me from the herd and turn on me. Football player. Baseball player. Football player.

The reason this got to me was I had written a piece about the baseball player not too long before this Turner garbage came out. He wasn't just ANY baseball player. He was the Coach's kid.

THE Coach.

The big one.

And you know? That kid has a criminal history bigger than the day is long. And at every goddamn twist and turn his daddy showed up to vouch for him. Gave him a job on the coaching staff. Made a deal with the prosecution. Etcetera. And you know what you'll find when you go out and search the newspaper archives for him?

SPORTS ARTICLES.


His brother? Also a giant steaming pile of shit. You know what happened when the newspaper said so? The family sued the newspaper.

Because they were tarnishing his image. Nevermind the fact that he got out of his car at a stoplight and STABBED SOMEONE.

NO.

So anyhoo. I ended up with this chump as a five-minute long boyfriend a million years ago because his friend was dating my friend. And long story short, he and the team (yes, THAT team) had a party that I never should have been at where he used his 90 pound difference to wrestle me into submission in a surprisingly hoarder-like office where I put my foot through a typewriter before escaping his liquor-weed clutches with a bleeding foot and some bruising on my torso and asked my friends if we could leave NOW.

This story does have a silver lining, and a point.

That dynasty is done. There's a new coach in town. And his wife? His wife was FirstKid's teacher this year. His wife has been both boys' advanced reading and math teacher for 4 years. And she has two small boys. And she is absolutely invested in raising our boys to be respectful. Of themselves, of other boys, of girls. Of leaving the competitive testosterone on the field. Of not rewarding aggressive behavior.

Of not accepting BOYS WILL BE BOYS.

As a mom of boys, I LOVE HER FOR THAT.

I love when ANY mom holds their kids accountable. But ESPECIALLY boy moms, and ESPECIALLY the ones who are filling in my shoes for dayshift Monday through Friday for nine month stints.

What did I tell my kids, personally? That they HAVE to respect people's personal space, and that they should never ever ever give anyone a surprise kiss, even if they think they want it. Will we have to talk more in the future? Yes. Especially with Clayton, who seems to have no less than two girls flitting around him at one time.

Now: GURNS-N-STURFF.

I cannot fathom the depths of despair felt by the family and friends of those victims of the Pulse shooting. I cannot fathom the depths of despair felt by the family and friends of those victims of the shooting before that one. And before that one. And before that one.

We have GOT to do something different.

Before you stomp off in a huff because Second Amendment and everything, let me say that yes, I know there's a difference between the ones that go BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT and the ones that go PEW-PEW-PEW-PEW-PEW-PEW-PEW and no I'm not interested in prying anything out of your cold dead hands.

But some of you need to calm the fuck down a little. Seriously.

Like, I think that just MAYBE it's OK for adults to MAYBE have a talk about the fact that MAYBE not everyone needs to emerge from a vagina with a firearm. My perspective comes from more than half a lifetime of exposure to (directly, personally, and peripherally) domestic violence situations and having knowledge of some just literally bat shit crazy individuals that, no matter the BRRRRTness or PEW PEW-osity of a weapon, they need to have access to neither.

Come back with me to a stalking trial where one of my questionable romantic decisions was accused of being a general asshole to me over an extended period of time after we both had moved on. I say "moved on" because we both were remarried, but obviously one of us was more "moved on" than the other. The activities were clearly criminal in nature or the court wouldn't have been involved.

At day of sentencing, I had to give a victim's impact statement. Aside from actual testimony, this is one of the most nerve wracking, painful things I have ever done. And I have pushed three live humans out my cooter. I talked about the things he had threatened, the fact that he bragged about knowing nine ways to kill someone with his bare hands, that he was a trained marksman, an avid hunter, he told me there were spots in the woods where nobody would find my body, and that he had rifles and a night vision scope.

There was only one use for that. Sneaking up on your prey under cover of darkness.

I asked the judge if it would be him - or someone else - who would explain to my children what had happened to me if he didn't impose SOME kind of punishment and I ended up dead. He was the type of offender that kept escalating his behavior until an external force stopped him.

My ex's response - by this time he was representing himself because both of the attorneys he'd had during the course of proceedings had quit, presumably because they knew he was guilty as hell - was that he expected the court to expunge his record AND just drop the charges. You know why?

Because: SECOND FUCKING AMENDMENT.

He was concerned that this conviction - which, by the way, we were already past that step, because, as you remember, here we were at SENTENCING...would prohibit his GOD GIVEN RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.

This fucker.

So when the judge got done peeling his eyes from the back of his skull, he clarified for the counsel-less loser who initially tried to not recognize said judge's authority because of the FRINGE on the FLAG in the courtroom (it's only for boats on the ocean blue, yo), that A) in order to have your record expunged, you actually have to SERVE your sentence, and B) the crime for which he was convicted was a misdemeanor so he needed to calm the fuck down with his Constitutional nonsense.

His influences? A dude who did federal prison time (after this) who is super good chums with Bo Gritz and thinks Randy Weaver got a shit deal. A dude who repeatedly invited me to his "impenetrable bunker" that was safe from "Government Invasion" because they were coming any day now to "round us up and put us in that concentration camp they built in central Washington - go look, there's concertina wire". And since I hate camping and also because he gave me the fucking willies, I never went. Then they let him out of prison and mysteriously his mortal enemy's business just burned the hell down. Weird.

So when people start getting all sorts of defensive about their guns right off the bat and aren't willing to acknowledge that "yeah, there's some nitwits that I don't think should have access" then I immediately lump you in the same category with the paranoid peeps who like to hang out in underground concrete bunkers and dodge their taxes by writing shit like "BLOW ME, IRS: YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME, AMERICA CAN'T EVEN OWN LAND OUTSIDE DC!" on the signature line of their 1040's.

What I think is that you're afraid. You're afraid that maybe you've said some shit you shouldn't have said. Maybe on the internet about how Obummer should be kilt. Or how Michelle looks like a monkey. And you're afraid that your comments are going to get YOU put on that list that will restrict your purchase power. And that freaks you out. Maybe you need to take a step back at how you're acting, then. Because all that shit that went down with the stalking and the "Government Invasion" that didn't happen? That was under the Bush Administration.

And that brings us to my appointment today, where my doctor ordered that the Universe knock off all this nonsense. And tonight is date night, where I will stick to my diet and where hubs is taking me to the place where we very last crossed paths with my psycho ex.

Fingers crossed that he has other plans.

Friday, June 17, 2016

Designated Driving Me Crazy


Last night was a family party night. And our family knows how to throw down. We were celebrating a big number NINE birthday in a typical manner that involved pizza, too much sugar, the assumption that the children would at least stay as a pack as they marauded through town, and my sister in law and I leaving with each other's sunglasses.

Game six of the NBA finals was streaming on the wall in the shop while Hubs washed down his cake, a random kid's leftover brownie, and any other snacks that fell in the radius of his wingspan with a hearty serving of his brother in law's outdated* beer.

And so as is customary, he tossed me the keys when I gave him the universal sign for "let's go", which is also the universal sign for "I'm about to slit your throat."



We piled in the family truckster and as usual, didn't make it a mile out of town before he started driving me batty. First he started in on ToddlerBandit by stealing from his supply of snacks that I keep loaded up in his cup holder for him to indiscriminately throw on the floor when he's mad at me.

I finally got him to leave the fruit loops alone and he decided to press every goddamn button in or around the dash board/radio area. Minions was playing in the back.

I watched his fingers fumble through the touch screen, making a mental note of how to unmuck his path of destruction.

The last time he pulled this, he converted my car's readouts to metric, and the language was either Icelandic or Swahili. So in town it always appeared I was doing 56 in a 35 and I didn't know whether the digital message was "roads may be icy" or "tire pressure low" or "there's an ax murderer in the backseat".

Suddenly everyone who was not speaking Minion was speaking Spanish.

Spanish. So the whole dialogue was MINION AND SPANISH.

He changed it back. Then Clayton began complaining about the narrator. "There's usually not a narrator on here, dad."

Yes. There is a setting where you can not only turn the subtitles on, but there's an additional voice that READS THE SUBTITLES ALOUD FOR YOU.

I suppose this is so that if you are blind, you might know what is going on in the movie. Like having your friend sit right next to you and whisper in your ear all of the goings-on throughout the entire movie. Which I applaud for the ADA community, but in this instance, and in my state of fried nerves rocketing down the highway at 65 miles per hour, I did not appreciate.

Fumble fumble fumble. Poke poke. Beep beep.

Fixed.

Now. This whole business of him being a terrible drunk passenger is almost ALWAYS compounded by the obscene amounts of sugar he has also consumed, which attempts to metabolize and escape his body by any means necessary, and so he fidgets and squirms and generally cannot be still. This is exactly the worst** time to be stuck in a car with him. Worse even, for him to be in the passenger seat.

With no more buttons for his hands to push, they must find a landing spot.



I spent the remainder of our journey swatting his hand away and generally treating him like a misbehaved toddler with ADHD. By the time we got home, his sugar crash hit and he was much easier to deal with. Life was back to normal, we cranked out a couple DVR'd episodes of trashy TV, and caught up on all the stuff from our lives this week that we forgot to talk about that we couldn't talk about in front of the kids.

This morning when I got up with a clear head and I saw him sleeping peacefully, as much as I wanted to pester him awake in retaliation, I didn't. There are a lot of guys out there who have a couple drinks and turn into raging, abusive wankers. Mine just ends up eating all the cake and wants to touch my boob a little.***


*It might not be, really. His distributor employeeship perk just makes my husband so jealous that he wants to try new things, like all the flavors in the mini-fridge.

**There is one more worst time to be stuck in a car with him, which I will defer to his sister or whomever the new owner of her previous car is for inquiries.

***I'm not saying I'll let him, I'm just saying I'm not mad about it. That's all. 


Monday, June 13, 2016

Monday Mammaries

I embrace Mondays.

That's not a joke, even. So when you pick yourself up off the floor...

Monday is the day when I muster up all the positivity I can in the early morning hours and tell myself:

"I'm gonna have my shit so together this week, I'm gonna eat all the right stuff and be super organized and I'm gonna just kick this week right in the balls."

~Me, every Monday morning ever, except holidays








Ok, that's enough of that.

Fortunately, I'm not one of those annoying people who goes around trying to motivate OTHER people to strive for great things on a Monday, or to be cheerful, or to embrace their own inner Oprah. It's all I can do to give myself this little pep talk, and before the buzz from the inhuman amounts of coffee I have consumed wears off, reality kicks in and it's back to normal.

Today was no exception. As I unrolled the frizzy curls that I had carefully tucked into a Pinterest headband after last night's shower, it was particularly difficult to keep my cheerful routine up. Things were already not looking off to a great start. When Monday becomes BunDay, your spark can only be found in the hope that maybe things could only improve from there.

Except that, no.

The stampede of new hires wandering the halls on their break were crowding into the bathroom like it was halftime at a NASCAR show. I had scurried out after washing my paws, not really wanting to linger to look at myself in the mirror to acknowledge or fuss with the disaster on my head. A straggler was holding fast in the right-lane of the hall, thumbs furiously playing catch up before it was time to silence her phone again. She looked up and smiled.

"Oh. I like your dress. That's really.....pretty."


Ok. Let's pause for a minute. Because outside of like, maybe two of my friends who have commented on an outfit in the past, literally NOBODY that I work with has ever thrown a compliment like this at me. Granted, I hide in a cave most of the time. Nobody has ever described me as "fashion forward". But today, today...in my forceful attempt at Mondaying like a bosslady, I put myself in a dress. With a belt AND a necklace. Which, if you really know me, you know that's a huge deal.

One of my biggest phobias is that someone will strangle me with my own clothes or jewelry.

Which is why was hyper-aware and thinking she had been staring at my necklace. But I thanked her and I walked with my head held higher back to my office, tossed my paper towel confidently into the trash (landed the shot, first try), and sat down to conquer the day.

This was the point at which I noticed one of my boobs was out.


Yes.

Well, not out IN PUBLIC, out, like Tara Reid on the red carpet. Out of my bra, out. In my never ending but so far failing quest to find the perfect strapless bra, I grabbed three options from my drawer this morning, and I went with the most comfortable one. Mostly to soothe myself over the hair thing, you know. And the best thing I can do to describe exactly what happened with it is to provide you with an overlay rendition on Esten's preschool drawing of me. You remember the one, right?

My bra. Being useless as tits on a boar.
No pun intended.
 Nipple placement: accurate.
This is basically a selfie.

This is the kind of shit that happens, people. I know it happens to you, too. Don't let everyone's perfect feeds fool you. Life is full of bad hair days, nip slips, and other disasters despite our best, most positive intentions to steer things otherwise. I have learned to laugh about it. I have no other advice to give. If you have some, I'm all ears.

Especially if you have a good lead on a reliable strapless bra.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

I'll Dove You Forever

"How are you with birds?"


This seemed like a loaded question. Obviously. I thought it had something to do with the "surprise" trip he has planned for my 40th birthday next Spring. The surprise I keep hinting that I'm not happy about, no matter how much he thinks I might be into it.

I even reminded him that one time I got on a plane and got surprised by getting new parents. (Before anyone gets their panties in a knot I acknowledge that things worked out for the best, but I'm entitled to also acknowledge that this might have slightly damaged the children involved, so stop.)

I thought maybe there was a bird sanctuary on the tropical island he picked. I was just imagining it, deciding that definitely a solid melon colored dress would look best on me in photos as I bravely kissed a parrot perching on my shoulder. I decided that yes, I'd be okay with birds.

Turns out, no. That wasn't exactly what he meant.

"There's a giant bird building a nest on the roof and it won't move. It's freaking me out. Can you get up there and get rid of it?"

Sigh.


As I headed outside to check on the source of his terror, I silently hoped this might turn out like the night I stayed up late before kids when he checked out for lunch on graveyard and I heard his boots thundering up the sidewalk at a lightning pace. He flung the door open and demanded I go rid the flower bed of a scary animal, one that he thought I was better equipped to deal with in my nightgown and no bra better than him in his kevlar vest, tactical pants with reinforced crotch panel, pepper spray, taser, and firearm. When I lifted the blinds, he pointed it out to me in the darkness with his thirty-five pound Maglite.

"That rock? That rock that's been there since we moved in? You're scared of a rock?"
 "I thought it was like...I dunno...a skunk or a raccoon or something...shut up."

But since I love him I never said a word about it. Oh wait. Nevermind.

Back to the bird.

This giant scary bird was a mourning dove. It sat motionless as that rock in a messy nest in the crook above Clayton's room. No matter how close I got (out of curiosity alone) it didn't even twitch. After a little Googling, I broke the news to him.

We thought the dove never left the nest. But that's not true. It was actually the male sitting all day and the female taking the night watch. They mate for life, and you always see them sticking together. Always. They don't even hang out in flocks or anything. They just hang out with each other watching Netflix.

You guys. They are just like us. These doves are our spirit animals.


They don't even squawk or shit on all the patio furniture or act like those asshole killdeer. If he had said, "can you get rid of the killdeer?" I would have loaded up the hockey wagon with bricks and run over all their babies. Because they're loudmouth jerks.

The doves are staying. Until their one baby is born. And then I will clear their nesting material out. I'm fine with that. He's not fine with that. He wants to burn the house down now. 




Sunday, June 5, 2016

Wife Preserver



We kicked off the official start to Summer yesterday by getting the SS Lee wet for the first time this season. Well, technically it was the second time if you count the test run after the annual spring thaw mechanic work happening earlier. It didn't sink that time, and it made it back to the dock.

It was hot as balls yesterday, too. So I just cannot tell you how happy I am that my children do not play stupid ass summer sports. There is no fiber of my being that wishes to burn my rump roasts on a hot metal bleacher seat despite my love for them. I am very sensitive to temperature extremes, and at least in the boat I have quick access to cool off.

It also couldn't have come at a better time for my sanity. Memorial weekend came on the heels of my out of town work trip, and as is customary for liquor and travel fueled celebrations for others, that meant Hubs spent a LOT of it away from home. Add in the boat races that needed extra hands on the water and I almost forgot his name by Tuesday.

We do not camp. Well, I do not camp. But boating is that thing that allows us to shut the world out, regroup as a family, and center ourselves where there's no wi-fi. To go where there's no time to be anywhere except when the sun goes down, to not stress about work, or deadlines, or asshole bosses or coworkers, or classmates, or whether you locked the front door.

"I thought YOU locked the front door."

"No, you were the last one out."

Shit.

I'm kidding.

Boating seems to be where we fire on all cylinders. Communication breaks down in other places, and how could it not when we are going different directions all the time? But when it comes to this, he's the Captain and I'm the First Mate.

I even have a shirt.

*Not actually me, FYI

 That's not me, mainly for the following reasons:

  1. I believe we have established that I still do not understand selfies and also I have T-Rex arms.
  2. My shirt is in the laundry and I'd rather write a blog post than do laundry.
  3. This shirt breaks my "no graphics/words" rule because TBH my rogue underboob awkwardly eats things and ruins the joke. So my shirt very likely just says "Mate". Which is weird.
  4. I wanted you to see where to go buy one if you really liked it, so here's the link.
Anyway. We are like team RamRod at the ramp. I envision that when other couples are having their court ordered counseling sessions triggered by the domestics we witness during their disastrous loading/unloading attempts, that they sometimes talk about us, not out of jealousy over the sweet sweet boat we have, but for our graceful dance, the one without words, the one that we execute like two Russian ice skaters who were forced at gunpoint to pair up and practice from a very tender age and can get very near one another with such sharp blades and no blood gushes forth.

They are SO jelly.

But we have it dialed. And we know that once we are away from the dock, we pause, but the dance continues. He makes the Boat Drink* while I remove two towels. One for the children to stand on while I sauce them up. One to sit on because the seats make my legs sweaty and that is disgusting. The children assume prison pat down stance. He kicks off the playlist for the day. I slip my wedding ring off and put it in the cup holder while I rinse all the sunscreen off my hands because I worry that the sparkler will slip right off my finger and sink 400 feet down, which is not even close to how far my heart would sink if that happened. We leave the world behind.

And we go burn a literal boat load of fuel. And the boy children take turns pushing themselves and each other to try new things at the end of a rope. And then ToddlerBandit needs a nap. So we just float. And swim. And float some more. And do literally nothing. And it is fantastic. It's really the best thing.

TB last year. Kid loves the boat.

TB this year. Professional chillaxer.
Still needs a haircut.
Still isn't getting one any time soon.




When we're done, it's all the same in reverse. He wipes down the outside, I gather up towels and garbage. I haul the bag to the dumpster and then I pee because it's a long ride home. Then we answer the eight million questions of the Fish and Game guy if he's there like, "no we didn't catch any fish" because "no, we didn't go fishing" because "there's never been a pole allowed on this boat", and "we were out there approximately seven hours". I help him with the cover, I make sure all the buckles on my side are snapped, and I put the back straps on. And we go. He is in charge of starting the movie for the kids once we're headed home because I don't know how electronics work.

It's a team effort, this.  Can he do it all himself? Yes. Totally. But you'll never catch him out there by himself. He's not that guy. Could I take the boat out with my friends or the kids for a fun day out without him? No. Not at all. I wouldn't want to. A First Mate needs a Captain. That's how it works.

Now before you think I'm getting all soft, let me remind you that as soon as we got home and the towels were in the dryer and the cooler was unloaded, things were....back to normal.

I headed to the back yard where Hubs was walking with a full armload of firewood that I assumed he was going to pile up near the back patio. Just as he dumped the entire load atop his already blazing bonfire I said,

"ToddlerBandit's girlfriend just stopped by to tell us that her parents were inviting us over to sit by the fire at their house."

He stared at me blankly.

"Could you not have maybe told me that BEFORE you watched me dump that enormous load of wood on this fire?"

"I thought you were hunkered in back here. I didn't know what your plan was."

"I for SURE would rather be at their place. But now we have to wait for this to die down."

And so again, our communication about all things off the water sucks. So we scooted our chairs back a little from the flame that was threatening to singe our eyebrows off and bored one another to death until we loaded up and headed off to better company.

**************************************

Because a lot of people ask for it, and because it's not that complicated, and because it doesn't even have a fancy name, here's the recipe for:

*Boat Drink

  • Coconut Rum - Parrot Bay is Hubs' fave - eyeball to your level of alcoholism
  • Pineapple juice - He uses a whole mini can per drink
  • Sprite - However much room is left in the cup
 

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

WCW: Teagan

Bellafaye Garden

It's Woman Crush Wednesday! It's been a while since I've shined the spotlight on a special lady. This week, it's ToddlerBandit's crush:

TEAGAN

She is Coach's daughter. She is teammate's sister. She was the babysitter when I had those pictures taken. Yes, those pictures. 

So we know she's trustworthy and she can keep a secret.

But let's talk about the pull of the Universe for a minute. That thing that draws a person to another person, even if person A is significantly more interested in person B than person B is in person A. For example, I joke at length that this was the case with my husband and I. (He was B and only stopped short of a restraining order out of laziness).

Specifically, the pull in ToddlerBandit's Universe can't be explained, but can be demonstrated and understood by those who know how he can sass-mouth me but bend to his Grandma's will, how he turns his curly head away from some hockey moms at the rink, no matter how friendly they are to him, no matter how they try to bribe him, but makes a bee line like a heat seeking missile to others. Others, like Teagan.

Hockey season may be long over, but he still reminds us at least once a day at random that "Teagan's my girlfriend", or "Teagan is coming to my house". He is basically in love with her in a way that he is not in love with anybody else. He would take a Nerf bullet for her.

Not a dart. A b-u-l-l-e-t.

He'll probably start pulling out his own teeth soon when he realizes he can get cash for them just to start putting money down on a little house with a white picket fence for the two of them. 

You know, it's like that adorable bat-shit crazy obsession that you hear about in love stories and on all-day crime marathons on Investigation Discovery.

Tonight, he got in an especially heated argument about it. With a cat. And it went just exactly how you imagine it went.

This asshole is trying to steal TB's GF
ToddlerBandit: "Teagan's my girlfriend."
Tom: "Teagan's my girlfriend."
TB: "No. Teagan's MY girlfriend."
Tom: "No. Teagan's MY girlfriend."
TB: "NOOOO. Teagan's MYYY girlfriend."
Tom: "NOOOO. Teagan's MYYY girlfriend."
TB: "MINE!"
Tom: "MINE!"
TB: "NO SHE NAAAHHHHT!"
Tom: "NO SHE NAAAHHHHT!"
TB: "You're naughty."
*throws tablet across the room* 
And after I settled him down from his little testosterone/steroid/jealousy induced rage, I explained to him that Teagan doesn't like when boys fight over her. And then I was silently happy for Teagan's dad, who has an added level of deterrence from teenage boys with this mini maniac on the loose.

For now, she fills her time with ballet, track (the hard, hurdling kind), gymnastics, and all the other whatnots she does - she seems to be just a small rubber band with a head, really. And the head they plopped on her is super smart and the stuff of princess tales, with the kind of face that you can't look at very long or you'll go blind, it's that pretty. And that's not even counting when she smiles.

I suppose when you combine all that with her calming demeanor I can see what draws ToddlerBandit in.