So, the missionaries (the midnight fire-starters) moved. In their place, we have two normal-looking adults with a wagon and a kid jeep in the back yard, so I suspect there might be a kidlet in there somewhere, but we haven’t seen a kid yet. Must go peer in windows, or possibly do the neighborly and acceptable thing, which would be to march up to their front door and knock, preferrably while proffering some southaaaaan foodstuff at the same time.

Actually, I was going to haul McPantses over there yesterday afternoon with me to do just that, but she was wearing a long, rainbow-colored tiered silk skirt with a matching headband (complete with long streamers) and had a tutu on ‘neath the skirt. She opted out of a shirt altogether. I figured we’d wait until she had on more clothes, lest we frighten anyone. (The dress up Christmas stash from the inlaws was a HUGE hit.)

We had a lovely Christmas and it was mostly quiet, which thrills me. My sis and her husband stayed at my house while my addlepated grandmother stayed at my parents’ house. For kicks, here’s a list of the things my grandmother said to me not once or twice, but dozens of times, over the holidays:

1. So when is this baby coming, again? (End of February.)

2. Oh, you’re so big–surely you’ll go sooner than that! (He’s due on 3/5. I will most certainly not go sooner than February.)

3. You’re really HUGE. (I have gained less than 1/3 of the weight I gained last time. I am NOT HUGE.)

4. Are you sure there aren’t two in there? (I’ve seen him on film more than once. There is just one.)

5. But you could still get a surprise. (I could not.)

6. Yes you could. (No, really. I couldn’t.)

7. But two would be so much better than one. (No, no, not for a second do I want another child, but thanks.)

8. But just think how wonderful it would be to have two! (For someone else, perhaps. Not for us.)

9. You should ask your husband, Husband, to bring you to my apartment. None of you [meaning the immediate Heels family] have ever been. (Granny, we have all three been to your house several times. Several times. My husband’s name is Husband. You’re calling him my sister’s husband’s name.)

10. My house? MY HOUSE? I don’t live in a house. I live in an apartment. (I was using “house” as a term for your “dwelling place,” be it a hut, an igloo, an apartment or a manse.)

11. Your husband has never even been to my state. (Like me, the Husband was born in your state, Granny. He lived there until he was almost a teenager. His sisters live there now and his parents are moving there in 2006.)

12. I think anyone should be able to walk into any church anywhere in the world and worship any way he wants. (Really? You wouldn’t mind if a Satan worshipper came into your church and drank the blood of a tiny mewling kitten? [no, I didn't say this one--I started to, but I just gave up.])

My grandmother is staying with my parents until the end of January. My poor, poor parents.

McPantses, regarding the breakable things in the breakfront in the kitchen: “they’re called glassables.” I like that.

My mother called a moment ago.

Mother: Do you still have that bed from the auction?

Me: God, no, mother, the Salvation Army fetched it weeks ago.

Mother: Well, I’ve been supposed to tell you that G [her friend] wants it.

Good Lord Almighty, people. BED GONE! NEVER TO BE SPOKEN OF AGAIN, OKAY?

Apparently, stress can exacerbate gestational diabetes. Who knew? Certainly not me yesterday morning as I struggled, bleary-eyed, to get my fasting blood sugar from fingers that would bleed no blood. It took six finger-pricks to get enough blood for one test and I was ready to cry by the time I was done. You can use your arm to do the pricks, but the nurse said it starts to look like track marks after a while. Nice. The pads of all of my fingers, save my thumbs, smart a titch.

I got the hang of it yesterday afternoon and now know to prick, squeeze like hell and THEN turn the damn machine on.

I have a few things left to pick up, giftwise, including McPantses’ binoculars and magnifying glass for her nature kit and picture frames for the gorgeous pictures a local gal took of McP that all the grandparents and great-grandparents are getting. They’re beautifully matted and signed and dated and it’s a testament to my Princess Pregnant Pants sensitivities that I picked them up, studied them and promptly burst into tears.

Other things that shouldn’t make a normal woman cry and would normally make this cold-hearted woman want to retch:

the portion of Build-A-Bear (what an insane, cheesey racket) where your child kisses the heart and does all manner of odd contortions with her new animal (a unicorn, in McPantses’ case) to give it giggles and love and a bunch of other crap … I cried like a baby and did so in front of my mother-in-law, no less.

the end of Polar Express. I am forever embarassed at sobbing in the I-Max theater.

In case you were wondering, even though a GD diet contains a huge amount of carbs (far more than I expected), it turns out that one cannot make one’s last snack of the evening a hot chocolate made with those delectable chocolate shavings that run about $18 a tin at Williams Sonoma. One’s overnight fasting blood sugar will fail by a few points (or more, if one is stricken with this plight worse than I am) if one does that. Perhaps one should hoard the chocolate shavings at the back of one’s pantry for post-partum hot chocolates…

Tonight we’re decking the halls and all that crap.

Happy Holidays. Be safe and be nice to your loved ones, if it kills you.

Number of nights this past week that McPantses asked, when we were on our way home from school, “Where are we going out to dinner tonight, mommy?”

Three.

Bad, bad Husband:

Me: I really, really want a bowl of ice cream.

The Husband: (contemplating my statement seriously) You know, it’s really just two months.

Me: Go smoke your Goddamned fucking cigar right now before I shove it up your ass.

The Husband: (grins)

Me: It’s really just two months until you can smoke a cigar again. Just 10 or 11 weeks, you know. How would you like to have ZERO cigars for that long?

Me: And add in no booze.

Me: And no coffee.

Me: (having just effectively wiped out three of his major food groups) Then what, HUNH?

The Husband: Well, then I wouldn’t really have a reason to live. And all of my back hair would probably fall out.

Me: Thought so.

Sadly, I still want the ice cream. Off to indulge in a spoonfulla peanut butter and a big ole cuppa water.

Sigh.

And I’m going outside to erase the Husband’s fourth major food group, just for fun.

(fried foods, for those keeping score)

It doesn’t match the theme for Illustration Friday (which is adoption), but I have a draw-ring* for a clothes show to turn out by Saturday a.m., so I may not do an adoption piece. This elephant, whose name is Petunia (and not Ellie, like the Husband suggested), is for McPantses’ birthday thank-yous. She is properly impressed and has been on an elephant-drawing kick herself lately.

And here’s a thank-you/pick-me-up in general that I just got a moment ago. A man called to talk about having me design thank-you cards for his daughter’s wedding. They’ll need at least 1000.

Helll-LO! That made my day and I could use a little day-making after a 2-hour long building Christmas party a mere three hours before my rocking Sunday school Christmas party this evening (complete with bartender and jazz pianist) that I’m sitting out and making the Husband attend alone.

Too many Christmas parties after yesterday’s lunchtime phone call face smack.

It appears that I have gestational diabetes and woooooosh, there went the holidays and the remnant of the faboo peppermint bark in the fridge from this past weekend’s kitchenfest.

No booze during Christmas parties is bad enough, but no booze and no sugar make me something-something.

I didn’t fail the long screening as horribly as some people fail, but I failed nonetheless and I am 30 hours sugar-free as of right now. I will probably need to stop by the artsy coffee shop and just give them my bankcard to get them through the next three months because I have yet to perfect the art of coffee of any sort sans sucre. Same goes for hot tea, but I shall try.

And the a.m. hot drinks are what help stave off the a.m. vomits, too, so it should be an interesting next few weeks. I wonder how long it takes to get sugar from one’s system, anyhoo? At what point will the Husband be safe from my sugar dee-tees-induced wrath, do you think? I’m sure he’d like to know.

Gestational Diabetes Clinic appointment next Tuesday a.m. I am to plan on it taking at least half a day (!), and it will include some sort of group lesson time. I no likey group medical lessons. Just show me how to use the farking monitors, give me a book and tell me what I can eat, for heaven’s sake.

Merry Happy!

Come decorate my tree, willya?

McPantses requests lights first.

You’ll have to get them out of the attic, though, and you’ll need to bring your own tall ladder because we only have the half ladder. Fortunately, the Husband is tall, so he can make the upwards haul from ladder to attic.

* If I am the only person who finds humor in the word “draw-rings,” please tell me. I may well be the only child who watched Simon make chalk drawings on Captain Kangaroo who liked Mike Meyers’ cheeky bathtub version more.

I find myself in the unfortunate position of having to explain that I apologized to the copycat woman. She did not copy my stroller and make changes. She uses clip art for which she pays a fee, and the stroller was clip art that she’s been using for years.

She did copy my wording and layout, but as the Husband put it, it’s not something we need U.S. Supreme Court involvement to settle. Wording is wording. Artwork is another matter.

I have learned two valuable lessons. First, before I ring someone up and ask her not to display my artwork as her own, I might check out that artwork myself first. Second, I know all about the business of copyright and about registering copyrights. For instance, I know that if you really really want your copyrights registered, you need to pay a knowledgeable messenger-type dude about $200 to hand-walk them through in D.C. Otherwise, the registration takes upwards of six months, partially because the mail for the Copyrights office feeds through Congress’ mail system, too.

I was totally prepared to shell out the extra $200 when I copyright my catalogue of new items in another month or so, but much to the Husband’s relief, I shall take the slower $30 route out, as we now know there’s no one waiting on the wings to steal my draw-rings.

Yes, Virginia, you can copyright a whole catalogue at once. Large stationery companies do that, so I feel safe doing it for myself. I’ll take the old images (which have already been “published” many times and are therefore subject to individual registration and not group registration) and copyright the most popular of them (which seems to be several kid images and a watercolor palm tree with Christmas lights strung all over it) at $30 each, too.

Soooo. I came. I squawked. I apologized. She was gracious. I didn’t mention that she copied my wording.

Next: did you know that I have a Dog God?

He is a chalk statue from an auction and he was about $20. Everyone hates the statue but me. The Dog God has the remnants of a coating of yellowish ivory paint and a gold collar and he’s so very Deco. If you look at him eye-level and right in his face, he looks quite sinister and like he might snap at your nose. Otherwise, he’s neat-looking. His paint is very flaky and he’s pretty dusty and dirty, but that’s because I don’t know how to clean him without chipping off the last bits of paint. If you even glance at him sideways, more paint chips off. He’s worth having around just for the incredulous sneer he got from the father-in-law last month.

My dogs have begun, in the last six weeks or so, leaving their bones at his feet every night. We have a large aluminum bucket-thingy (into which one could put ice and drinks at a par-tay) full of (hypoallergenic and overpriced) dog bones and woogies (doesn’t everyone call knotted rope toys “woogies?”) and we pick them up every day(ish) and return them to the bucket. Maggie T, the younger of the two goldens, drags out several bones every day and leaves her offering to the Dog God. Even the more mature Miss Libby has started doing it.

We’ve been keeping an eye on it and it’s become a daily occurrence.

It helps take the place of the Prime Time Lizard, whose absence has left a gaping hole in our lives. The PTL used to show up every night between nine and ten p.m. to hang out on the den window screen and watch t.v. with us.

I fear the PTL came inside to visit and the cat mauled him or gobbled him right up and puked him back out again. She likey the lizards a whole lot.

The dog statue worship is our new pet oddity. It’ll do as a substitute, I reckon.

That’s the topic for Illustration Friday and I’ve been excited about it because of the loverly loobylu’s A Month of Softies. Their theme last month was Elephants, and the fabulous resulting page inspired me to draw my own elephant (much to McPantses’ delight).

So, I was going to use the elephant for the Security illustration. I wanted to draw a leetle birdie standing on the elephant’s back while a cat glared up at the elephant.

Somehow, I only got the elephant done. I drew her much earlier this week, but I only colored her in last night, with McPantses happily hanging off my shoulder, pretty much, and then the phone rang and my night took an interesting turn.

My stationery pimp (my friend who sells my stationery) called to tell me that someone else who sells her own stuff has a copy of a design I did last Christmas (a combo birth announcement/Christmas card) on her display board. The Junior League had its in-house bazaar last night and about 40 vendors had booths and displays, etc., and my friend was across from this other person.

What in the samhill do I do about this?

To complicate matters, the transgressor and I teach a children’s church class one Sunday a month. I had no idea she had a card business and I didn’t pay much attention to her display last night (I’m a little miffed that she stood me up for the last Sunday we were to teach together, so I didn’t feel like bothering with her), but I did notice, as I walked by, that she seems to be doing Christmas cards in my style (the lazy man’s way out: flat card with design in a certain place and text in two certain places) and I’ve never seen cards in my style before.

Sooooo, I decided that rather than fret and stew all night about it, I would just call her up and talk to her about it. So I called and said, “Look, I need to ask you a favor and I am very uncomfortable doing it, but two people just called to tell me that you have my design for X’s card last year on your display.”

And she denied that it was my design. And I said, “It’s not the exact same layout, the same stroller and everything?” And she said, “The stroller is different. I did use the same picture from last year’s card, but only to show people an example of what they could do.” She told me I was welcome to look at it and I told her, no thanks, no big deal, see you at church.

So, she took my design and made some small alterations and swiped it and displayed it as her own. What’s hysterical is that I can document that stroller doodle back to 2000 because it’s all over McP’s baby book. It was on a Christmas birth announcement for someone else in 2002 and it’s been on a set of calling cards, too.

It’s one of my first designs and the Christmas stroller is in magic marker, of all things. It’s not even particularly good. So I told the Husband and he said, “She went to the trouble of stealing a design and it’s not even a good one?” No kidding. Plus, this is not Manhattan. We don’t live in a huge metropolis teeming with card businesses, etc. She swiped a design from someone who lives about two miles from her house.

There is a ceramist here in town who does the most adorable luggage tags/calling cards for kids that you’ve ever seen. I have given her kiddie placemats as gifts many times. I am in awe of her talent and occasionally envious. But it would never have occurred to me to just doodle her stretched-out jumpy frog for my stuff. Ever.

Who does that?

I asked the Husband later last night if he thought that since she was brazen enough to swipe the design and deny it, did he think she was angry at me for calling? And he said, “Yes, she’s angry. Hitler killed six million Jews. People can rationalize anything.”

Security, indeed. I’m going to figure out how to copyright/trademark my artwork.

Security part deux: I was considering drawing a syringe full of blood (ack!) for today’s illustration because if I get a clean glucose test on Monday, I’ll be quite happy and secure. For a while, at least.

Security part trois: As soon as I can remove all the doGdamned poker spam from the comments section, I will be a happier camper. I hate to do this and I never intended to do this, but the poker lurker has forced me to ask you to register before making comments. I am happy to read anything any of you have to say, be it negative or positive (I am really surprised that my incredibly rude posting from a month or so ago only got one negative response–it certainly deserved more), but I am never happy to read poker spam.

I don’t know why, but I can’t quit thinking about this woman and the design-stealing. It’s just so, so, I don’t know, so crass and so foul. It speaks volumes about her talent as an artist and about her sense of ethical behavior. I’m thinking a subtle gossip campaign will be the way to go, but that’s a war she might win. Nothing like two good Christian women involved in a (as the Husband titled it this a.m.) Death Feud.

(Really. He said, “I can see that this Death Feud won’t be ending any time soon.” While the Husband agrees that what this vile woman did was beyond the pale, he’s fairly busy himself and he cannot get too, too worked up about it. He is moderately amused at my inability to think about much else, though.)

Security my ass. Grow some talent woman, and draw your own designs. OOooooh, security: if you’re stealing my magic-marker drawing from 2000, I obviously don’t need to worry too much about your talent.

**insert evile Grinchy smile here**

ETA: All you ever needed to know about copyrights can be found online at the U.S. Copyright Office. When one creates artwork, one automatically has a copyright in that artwork (unless it’s a work for hire, but that’s another story altogether). Many unscrupulous online wankers will want to charge you hundreds of dollars to send in your copyright form (which only serves to provide public notice of your copyright–your copyright is established as soon as you create your artwork), but the registration form, should you choose to register with the gubmint, isn’t terribly hard to complete and it costs a whopping thirty bucks. I am now trying to figure out if I can register all of the frances mcpantses artwork in one big group because I am a cheapskate. Take THAT, you doodle-thieving funsucker!

That’s what they say, anyway.

And that’s what I told myself last night as McPantses leaned in for a hug (it was a hug I requested) and put her face up to mine and rubbed her nose to my cheek, solely for the purpose of wiping her snotty nose off on my face.

And I said, “Did you just really wipe your nose on my face?”

And she said, “No, mommy.”

And she laughed.

“I wiped my nose off on your cheek.”

Little monkey child.

Today, at a 27 week appointment, I got a nice, long gander at the boychild and he is beautiful. He flexed his hand and waved at me (say whatever you want–he waved and I saw it) and I got to see all his parts and his feet positioned up over his head, just like McPantses’ were the last 12 weeks of my pregnancy with her.

At 20 weeks, Third was breech and in the same spot as McP.

At 27 weeks, Third is still breech and in the same spot. Anyone taking odds as to where this kid will be at 38/39 weeks?

I failed the GTT test by more than 20 points over my failing score last time, which bites. I am to report to another hospital Monday morning at the asscrack of dawn to suffer through the long test, but after the beautiful baby I saw today, I can’t much complain.

Much is the operative word, tho. The long test sucks.

McP and I have a gingerbread house to decorate, which means that I need to buy the stuff with which to decorate. I guess a prolonged trip down the candy aisle is what we’ll do. She’ll enjoy that.

Third won’t wipe his nose on my face, will he? WILL HE? Tell me “no.”

It’s the theme for Illustration Friday.

Meet Bubbles Bunny. She’s having a soak in a champagne glass tub in the Poconos. She may or may not be on her honeymoon. She’s not saying. She did confess that she’s waiting for the obligatory silly photographer to take the obligatory champagne glass tub photo before she really lets her ears down, though.

It’s great fun to dash off a little doodly thing for pleasure for a change. McPantses watched Angelina Ballerina and snuggled with me in my bed while I scrabbled out Bubbles. McP was fascinated at the notion of bathing in a glass.