Sweet Dreams for One and All

While we were in Cleveland, I saw something that I haven't been able to get out of my head. Somewhere in the mall we visited, we came across some a store that sold custom-made dolls. Alexis LOVED the dolls. They were adorably life-like with cute little faces, realistic little bodies, charming little outfits, and came complete with an $89 price tag. For obvious reasons, we put the babies back in their beds and left empty-handed.

Over a week later, I find myself regretting that we didn't buy one of those dolls. I know, I need slapped. No two-year old needs an $89 doll, even if she does take really good care of her toys and almost never asks for things when we are in a store and she would treasure that doll for years and she has been pretty well-behaved lately and it could wear real baby clothes and they were all so cute and

FINE.

I want the doll.

There. I said it. I want the stupid $89 doll. However, we aren't about to jump in the car and drive two hours just to buy me a new doll. So, this morning I figured I would see if I could find them online. I asked Mr. Google for some custom made dolls and he showed me this:

Um, yeah. That's not exactly what I was looking for. Actually, that image kind of creeps me out. So I tried again and got this:

*shudders*

Clearly, we have a pattern on our hands. I knew there were a bunch of crazies living in the Internet and I knew there were doll crazies in this world, but I HAD NO IDEA the depths of loony the doll crazies could conjure if they found the Internet. I feel the need to share a few of the faces that will be haunting my dreams tonight. You're welcome.

These dolls aren't so bad, but those outfits are the stuff of nightmares. And maybe flashbacks, but I can't talk about that without my shrink in the room.

This one is 40 inches tall and I'm pretty sure she could kick my butt.

In fact, I'm pretty sure she knows how to use a puzzle piece as a ninja weapon of human destruction.

It looks like she already had her first victim:

You can tell me that all those scratches and bruises just make that thing look life-like, but I then get to tell you that you are wacked out. Dolls should not look like their faces were pulverized with a puzzle piece.

Nor should they have evil eyes that can bore holes in my soul.

While I'm pretty sure that doll is doing the devil's work, this one is just plain pissed off:

Her description claims that she is "lifelike and sweet." Um, yeah. Sweet. I must be confused as to the meaning of that word.

Speaking of pissed off dolls, check this one out:

You know what she's thinking? OK, nothing because she is a doll. But, if she were a kid? She would be thinking about how pissed off she is that someone took her picture while she had that doily on her head. That ain't nice.

This one isn't really all that bad:

But it's female counter-part sure is.

I swear on a big package of gummy worms, I have seen the grown-up human version of that doll working the night shift at Waffle House. However, I have never before seen a doll that looked like it smoked two packs a day.

This one is looking to heaven in hopes of having it's prayers heard. It's praying that the Harley chick drops her cigarette ash on that outfit and the whole thing goes up in a cloud of smoke.

At some point during my over-priced doll quest, I started to consider the idea of having a doll made that looks like Alexis. But then I saw this:

Say what you want, that is a 10 on the Creep-O-Meter if you ask me.

This one is about a 13 on the Creep-O-Meter:

Dolls should not look like they are straight out of somebody's va-jay-jay. Never.

I could keep going on for hours with all the scary stuff I found while trying to find a cute new doll that wouldn't give me nightmares, but I have a Penguins game to watch. So I'll leave you with this:

You are so very welcome.

Won the Battle, but Sure to Lose the War

Alexis came home from daycare on Friday with a new phrase firmly etched into her vocabulary: You can't do that. Unfortunately, she only knows how to use it in the brattiest, snidest way possible. All weekend she's been using the phrase that pays as a means to get back at us when she's the one that has been busted for standing on the table, feeding her lunch to the Bulldog, taking her shoes off in the car just as we were pulling into the parking lot to go grocery shopping, or going double back flips off the chandelier. It has not gone over the way she was hoping. Instead of turning the situation around and getting off scott-free, it has resulted in her getting into even more trouble.

I think maybe she has finally caught on that she's wasting her breath. A little bit ago she decided it would be a fabulous idea to take the green Dots out of her mouth and try to hand the half chewed gummy sugar to somebody, anybody. I told her no, Daddy told her no, and I finally told her to either put them back in her mouth or throw them away. She looked at me, wagged her crusty green finger, and said, "You can't do that." I stared at her with my best "Knock it Off Now or Else Face." She tried to stare back, but instead found herself saying, "You can do that" as she marched her little behind to the trash can.

It's good to be the Mom.

Yeah, That Makes Sense

There's plenty of evidence to indicate that I'm not an idiot. I got good grades in school, I went to college on an academic scholarship, and I work with pretty complicated technical concepts at work. The only thing is, I am an idiot. A BIG idiot.

This morning when I went into Alexis' room to feed the fish in the saltwater tank, I noticed a crab sitting at an odd angle behind the rocks. I studied it for a minute or two and when it didn't budge, I cleverly deduced that it was not a living crab. So I moved the rocks, scooped the corpse up with a net, and gave him a proper clockwise funeral. Flusherooooo!

I didn't say anything to Mr. Husband because I have found a shrimp corpse and another crab corpse in the past few weeks, and I didn't really need to hear him tell me that I need to figure out what is wrong with the tank. I ran every water quality test under the sun this morning and couldn't find anything wrong, so him asking me if I checked the pH, ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, calcium, iodine, buffering capacity, blah, blah, blah would have just annoyed me to no end.

We spent our day out running various errands, including important tasks like buying Strawberry Shredded Wheat so that Alexis doesn't fall victim to SSW deprivation tomorrow. When we got back home, I went straight upstairs to feed the fish and turn off the light for the night. The instant I dropped a couple of chunks of frozen fish food into the tank, I noticed a little claw come swiping out from under a rock. I stared at that damn crab for a solid five minutes trying to figure out how it not only returned from the dead, but found it's way all the way through the sewer system, across the hall, and back into the aquarium. I finally decided that it was either a ghost, or we must have had a crab in the tank that we didn't know about.

So, Mr. Husband came upstairs and I told him we have a ghost in the tank. He looked at the little crab and then said, "He probably just shed his exoskeleton."

Oh, yeah, that would be slightly more logical than a ghost crab returning to a crappy little tank in the afterlife, now wouldn't it?

Now I'm trying to figure out if anything ever died, or if I've been pulling out shed exoskeletons, obsessing for hours every day over water quality, and cursing the death of a bunch of over-priced critters for no reason.

I am an idiot.