Happy 4th!

Well, no baby yet. Ruth is miserable. She has been having contractions every 4 minutes since Monday. They have had minimal sleep. They could do the labor induction today - but today is SD's birthday. And Ice Cube did not want his son born on SD's birthday. For some reason, Tia, keeps thinking the baby will come today. This is something that we're hoping doesn't happen. Ice Cube really doesn't want his son to share a birthday with someone that he has so many hard feelings about like he does SD. I think that if that happened, it would cause more problems. SD would try to use it to claim a connection that he doesn't and won't have with the baby. Ice Cube is adamant that he does not want SD to even see a picture of his son. Now, I'm not sure how we're going to avoid that, but whatever he wants, we'll try to respect his wishes. This, of course, means that Tara will not be given a picture of her new nephew.

We have been staying at Vix's house. They do not have a big house. 2 bedrooms. Hurricane lives here so he has one room. Little Man and B have been camping out in his room. I have been sleeping on the couch. I will say that Hurricane offered me his bed. I turned him down. I can sleep thru most any noise that is not kid related. If I hear a door open in the middle of the night, I'm up like a shot. If I hear a window open on the opposite end of the house. I can process their conversations that they think to have while I'm asleep. But Cal blaring the TV till 4 am - I can sleep thru. Cal on the PS3 till 4 am - I can tune out. And with Cal's MS - his schedule is all messed up. He tends to sleep away the heat of the TX day and then be up at night when it's cooler. This means that we're trying to be quiet all day long so he can sleep. Then he gets out of bed at 9 PM and wants to go all night and not let anyone else sleep. B is not happy. I finally got him to start crawling in bed with his brother where it's not as noisy and he could get some decent rest before he ends up sick. Vix and I are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to cleaning house too. And don't get me wrong - my house is by no means ever spotless. I have never owned a new piece of furniture. Most of my wall decorations are pictures of my kids. But, I vacuum every day. My dishes stay done. My laundry is clean if not always put away promptly. You're not going to walk into my house and get eaten by a 3 year old dust bunny. Vix and I cleaned her desk off the other night. I kid you not, I was throwing away coupons that expired in 2007. Now, I might put something in a drawer and not find it for 6 months to a year before I clean that drawer out again. But, not on a counter or my desk. But then, Vix says I'm anal because I put my cans in the cupboards all together. How else are you supposed to know how many cans of corn or peas you have? We're just as opposite as night and day. She has pet rats - we have a ferret. She does cats (which I cannot do! Having a cat climb on my counters just bugs the daylights out of me!). I have dogs. She sleeps till 2 pm every day. My internal alarm goes off around 7 and it does not matter what time I went to bed the night before - or the morning of as the case may be. She is laundry helpless ( I've done no less than 10 loads of clothes since I've been here) - don't let me loose with any type of electrical saw I'm prone to chopping my fingers off (she builds beautiful wooden furniture). And yet, this woman has been my best friend for 30 years. Now, if I can only drag her out of the bed and house today to actually DO something for the 4th.

Have a happy 4th y'all! I will continue the sage of what happened when Hurricane called SD later. I will let you know that the boys escaped unscathed - they were mostly amused by it all and the emotional damage from the attempt to make contact seems minimal to none. Enjoy your fireworks, bar-b-ques or vacation plans!