Today, the 27th of November, my Monkey turns 13 years old.  THIRTEEN years old.  This is a big birthday for him.  And for me.  This is my baby.  He is a  teenager today.

And he is not here with me.  He is in Cancun with my parents.  Ugh.

My joy is him.  My joy is remembering 13 years ago when I held his squalling, angry newborn self in my arms.

My sadness is that he is not here with me to celebrate the anniversary of this momentous occasion. 

Happy birthday my wonderful Monkey Man.  13 years ago today the world was graced with your presence.  And you have already made a huge mark.

I had the Monkey with me all weekend since it is the last weekend before I move to Alabama. It was a great weekend with him, spent giggling, playing and doing the things that we have fun doing. All with the under current that we both didn’t want to say out loud – it was the last time we were going to see each other for a while. While the Terrorist and I LOOK just a like, I think the Monkey and I are more a like in our temperaments, sense of humor, etc.

Friday night we grabbed some take out and came home to watch all the shows that had piled up on my TiVO this week. It was a nice, quiet, lovely evening together.

Saturday I had to work all day (haet!) but then we got dressed and headed out to dinner with the BDITU, his fiance and their friend at Dave & Buster’s for dinner. That was 6 hours of pure, unadulterated fun and stupid belly laughs. OMG, I had such a good time with him. We had a blast. I didn’t want it to end.

Today, I got him up and after breakfast, we headed to Best Buy to let him shop for his birthday present. He picked a Star Wars game for the Wii and a cool controller add on that turns the Wii-mote in to a light saber (which is very cool). We picked up his birthday cake, came home, picked up the Terrorist and headed to my mom and dads house. We ate dinner (omg spaghetti – yum) and had cake, then it was time to leave.

It broke my heart. I hugged on him several times, kissed all over him and said good bye 100 times. I held it together though until I left the folks house. Once in the car, I sobbed on the Terrorists shoulder. And she let me. She was actually a good kid today, fun to be around, no attitude. I was so grateful to her for that. And I told her so. Her response? “I know Mom, you are going to miss him. I will too.” That just made me sob harder. Ugh.

So, the sad is obvious. The good is that the Terrorist was not a twit today. And now? I’m going to go watch the show Firefly on DVD since I bought it today while I was at Best Buy.

I had a good, albeit lazy holiday weekend.  I left work early on Friday and went to a late lunch with my coworker Beth.  It was so nice to be able to sit and relax and not clock watch at lunch.  She’s 20 and with a boy she shouldn’t be.  She comes in every other day and comes to whine about how they got in a giant fight the night before and that she should just break up with him.  Uh, yeah, well then do it!  But then he does something all sweet and she forgives him.  Ugh.  Oh well.  All I can do is be supportive.  I do keep telling her that he’s not worth it since he causes her SO much grief, but eh, I was 20 years old once and I remember what it was like.

After lunch I picked up my Monkey from my mom’s house and we headed home to my house.  Picked up dinner on the way home and just hung out here and relaxed.

Saturday we watched I Love You, Man.  I didn’t like it.  At all.  But, maybe that’s because my expectations were so high.  I love Jason Segall and Paul Rudd so much.  But this one just fell flat.  Whatevs.  Then, we took off to go see the movie Gamer (which I loved, lots of UBER violence, buckets of blood and gore, and a very dirty, sweaty, sexy Gerard Butler – yummm) and then off to Best Buy.  You can see the post below about that.  What I didn’t explain below is that my phone STILL wasn’t working properly hours after I got home.  I could call and text (hmmmm, I used it to order Chinese food for dinner Saturday night) but I could not seem to access the internet or any of the other net related applications.

I got up Sunday, still couldn’t make it talk to the network, so I headed to the Sprint store.  I had purchased the phone at Best Buy and they were supposed to activate it, and it appeared they did, but apparently not.  Turns out that the twat at Best Buy had not actually converted my plan to the Everything plan that includes the required data package for the Blackberry.  So, he did it for me.  He figured that doing that would fix it, and told me it could take up to 4 hours to fully propagate through the system.  I went off on my merry way, stopping at the pet store for a new toy for Satan, then at the grocery store for a few things.

I woke up today, and my phone STILL would not connect.  Boooo.  We watched Coraline this morning, laid around all lazy like and finally at about 3 I made the Monkey go get cleaned up and packed to go back to my moms (boooo).  We took off and I headed BACK over to the Sprint store.  The (very cute) boy working there told me that if the phone didn’t fix itself Sunday night to come back and he’d work on it some more.  I was in that damn Sprint store for an hour and a half.  BUT HE FIXED IT.  He had to completely wipe everything off and reload all the software from scratch and then activate it – properly.  That twat at Best Buy had completely hosed up the activation process, in addition to not moving me to the correct plan.  He even kind of chastised me for going to Best Buy for the phone (even though I did get it for nearly half the price I would have paid at the Sprint store), and asked me “So, when you need another new phone, are you going to go back to Best Buy?”  LOL  He’s lucky he was cute, and fixed my phone, or I might have kicked him.

So, now I really, REALLY want to marry this phone and have little Blackberries with it.  SO. MADE. OF. WIN.

Then the Monkey and I went off and, grabbed some dinner, and I dropped him off at my mom’s.  Sad. 

But, it was a good weekend over all.

So, as you may have noticed from my last post, I had my Monkey with me again this weekend.  We had a great time.  I detailed our day yesterday in the post below this one (along with goofy picture AWESOMENESS) and today we slept in, ate a late breakfast and just goofed off, hanging out, playing games, talking, reading, etc.  It was another really great weekend with him.  My Dad was in a golf tournament all day today and my mom went to the Cardinal’s baseball game, so I had him until early evening.  About 5:30 I headed towards my mom’s house with the intention of stopping to get dinner with him while waiting for my mom to get home so I could drop him off.

We went to Mimi’s Cafe for dinner (OMG I love their buttermilk spice muffins), and as he finished his dinner, he leaned back, patted his now very full belly and said “I’ll be glad to get home and relax.”

Let me say it again.  “I’ll be glad to get home and relax.”

My mother’s home.

Not HIS mother’s home.

A very big part of my heart broke into a billion pieces when he said that.  Of course, I couldn’t let HIM know that.

I am so incredibly sad.

YAY!  Today I went and got the Monkey from my mom’s house so he can spend the night.  This whole having him live at my mom’s house thing is harder than I thought it would be.  I’ll say this…..to all you parents out there that do not have custody of your children because of divorce?  I get you.  I really, really do now.  I miss him every single day, even though he’s just across town and I talk to him on the phone every day.  I miss his presence in my house, his bad jokes, his snuggles, his kisses.  I miss him.

So, anyway, I got him from mom’s this morning and we headed over to the mall.  I needed something from Hot Topic (OMG did I just say that???) and wanted to walk around and shop for a bit.

We hit the mall and went in to the bookstore first.  I wanted a couple books and told him he could pick 1 or 2 books up as well.  I love that he loves to read like his momma.  Probably the ONLY trait of mine he got.  The Terrorist?  She could care less about reading.  No matter how much I tried to get her to like it when she was a kid, it was no dice for her.  But the Monkey?  He’d sit and read all day long. 

After the book store, we headed down to Hot Topic so I could get some stuff to clean this new piercing.  It’s a lot closer than going all the way back down to the shop where I had it done, and Hot Topic carries it, so I went there to get it.  I took this picture of the Monkey while we were in there.

I REALLY wish I had been quicker with my phone, because 10 seconds before I snapped this he was wearing a tiny black hat with ruffles and netting.  It was quite teh awzum, let me tell you.  Sadly, he wouldn’t let me take his picture with the hat on.  Probably because of stuff like this:

OMG just looking at this picture CRACKS ME UP.  It was Halloween when he was about 5 years old.  The Terrorist had gone dressed up as Wednesday Addams and had that long braided wig.  It was SO hot – it was always ridiculous hot in Houston on Halloween – and he had stripped down to his underwear as soon as we got back in the house.  I came out of my bedroom and found him streaking through the living room in just his knickers and her wig.  I almost couldn’t take the picture because I was laughing so hard.  He was CLEARLY not happy about me taking this picture.  But OMG it is so funny.

Okay, so after Hot Topic, we hit the food court and grabbed some lunch, then went to the video game store.  He is taking the Wii system back to my mom’s so I let him pick a new game.  Oh, and I accidentally bought 3 other games for myself (HEY – they were all used….so it wasn’t TOO bad).  After that we just wandered around, enjoying our time together, just him and I.  I did wander by the perfume shop and went in and asked if they carry my most favorite perfume – Paloma Picasso.  I ran out a few weeks ago, which was a very, very sad day.  Not only did they have it, they had the BIG bottles on sale for 50% off.  HOLY GOOD DEALS BATMAN!  $50 later, I was happily out the door with my favorite perfume and the Monkey.

He’s busily playing his new game and I am getting ready to fire up the grill for steaks (filet mignon – YUM) and brauts, and get going on the roasted garlic mashed potatoes that the Monkey specifically asked for tonight.  So, I guess, with that, I’m out for the evening.  Gonna go hang out with my baby boy.