Believe me....I was freakin adorable.......

So, I haven't written in a while. That's due to many factors....stress, illness, lack of inspiration, coworkers breathing down the back of my neck, a nasty fungal infection on my fingertips which prevents typing.....You all know how it is.

During my absence to the blog, a festering of annoyance and dissapointment has been infecting my very soul. Sounds serious, huh? My parents recently (like 8 months ago...if you can call that recent) moved into a new place. Mr. and Mrs. Packrat are the royal couple of disorganization, and their moving process was apparently quite a fiasco. In the year or so preceding their move, I had been slightly aware that my mother couldn't find my baby pictures. I am the youngest child of three, and, as is typical for youngest children, my parents weren't as concerned with archiving my childhood as they were my brothers'.

The lives of most baby girls are memoralized in cutesie pink and white gingham baby books with sentamentalities like "First word" and "First food eaten" and "First steps" and "First time drunk" filled in on the pages. I didn't have one of these. I remember seeing little blue ones all filled in for my brothers, though. There were goofy pictures of little boys with baseball bats and puppies running with their ears blowing behind them and Tonka trucks all over the vinyl covers. I was more than a little bit jealous of the care that had been taken to put these together.

The last time I recall seeing my baby pictures, they were all tucked inside a white paper bag. I had previously bought my mother a set of matching photo albums in hopes that she would be encouraged to organize the evidence of my young life. It didn't work, by the way. I'm not sure when or how the white paper bag was misplaced, but, alas, it happened. I inquired about its whereabouts many times, and my mother would blow me off. "Oh, they'll turn up. Calm down."

So, (going back to the aforementioned move) as my parents began packing and preparing for their move, I was sure my baby pictures would be found. My brother traveled to their home one weekend to help them pack, and, from what I understand, threw a great deal of items away with mad fervor so that our mother wouldn't decide that she needed to keep every issue of Redbook from the 80's....even the one with Mel Gibson (who then sported a facial feature closely resembling a uni-brow). It was a smart move on his part, but it seems that many would-be keepsakes were done away with in his rush. I fear that my pictures were one of them. My parents didn't see them once during the whole process.

What infuriates me the most is that neither of my parents consider this a signicant reason for upset. Last time I saw them, I was nearly in tears about the situation, and they both laughed at me. "Allison. Stop it. We have your pictures.........somwhere.............probably." That was all the consolment they could bring themselves to muster.

I lapsed into an emotional soliliquy about how my place on our family tree will be looked over when future generations can find no photographical evidence of my existence. I won't have the opportunity to pretend to be humiliated when future boyfriends meet my parents, and no naked bath-time shots are dragged out. My (currently) unborn children won't be able to see that mommy dressed up like a hobo when she was two; wearing a fishing hat and pushing around a tiny plastic shopping cart. No laughter will fill the room as people see me crying after smashing my face into my first birthday cake or holding an armful of newborn kittens on my grandmother's ugly green chair when I was three. Ugghhh......countless memories all gone. Is ANYONE understanding my devastation here?????


A torturing amount of salt was poured on the wound of my lost several weeks ago. I was sick with an exhausting strep-throaty, fluish plague. I made it through most of my week only half-awake; stammering in a four day-long NyQuil hangover. I left work early one day, and, after pumping myself full of Gatorade and Tylenol Flu, my kitty and I nestled into the couch for some mid-afternoon programing. Ellen Degeneres was interviewing Jennifer Love Hewitt. Or "Love", as her friends and family refer to her. Love was perkily recounting the story of her recent 26th birthday party. Something about McDonald's and Strawberry Shortcake decorations. I wasn't really paying attention. But then the bitch had the nerve to pull out the gift her mother had made for her. It was a carefully constructed scrapbook full of every birthday photograph from her childhood. Every party, every cake, every happy face......all displayed with loving care. As if being rich and generously busted isn't enough...she has all her baby pictures, too. I hate her.