Back...and Bigger Than Ever

Yikes. The slacks are starting to feel too tight again! Anyone else having this problem? Raise your hand! For starters I was at the sheriff's academy Monday-Wednesday and there is nothing to eat around there but fast food or Mexican Taquerias. Now, we did have an hour+ for lunch but I spent Tuesday and Wednesday lunchtime at the nearby public library, checking my email and stuff. Also researching some of the material I learned about at the class, "Investigating Child Abuse." I am just too curious! Was Lewis Carroll really a pedophile? And I must find this book, Zero at the Bone, about this nut! Also some freaky movies we talked about. A lot of this shit is hard to find, and I'm a librarian with access to WorldCat and everything. We also looked at some child pornography magazines and I certainly don't need to do that ever again, thank you very much. But it was a highly interesting, intensely disturbing class and now I'm a certified Child Abuse Investigator. Or something like that.

As usual, I got the scenarios right. You get called to a house with a single mom and 4 kids, all under the age of 6. The little 4-yr old girl has a burned, blistered hand. The mom claims the little girl burned it in the bathtub. You run the hot water for awhile and test it with your thermometer (because all cops carry thermometers, right?!?) and the water only goes up to 138 degrees. Can you arrest mom? HELL YES, I said! Mom lied to me! That injury happening that way is not possible! And some of my classmates argued with me, saying they couldn't prove Mom did it. I said she had to do it, b/c no one else in the house could've done it and no kid is going to keep their hand under hot water that long enough for it to be blistered. I said I'm taking in Mom for Injury To A Child, which in Texas even if it's an accident it's still a crime, and I'm calling CPS to come take the other kids before Mom hurts them too. And I was right.

So besides all the academy fun, I was busy with a couple of holiday parties this week. Tuesday night Auntie R. came and partied with me. Last night was Job #1's holiday party. The snacks and treats and delicious party food just keep on comin'. I ate a shitload of boiled shrimp and even partook in the rum punch last night! Then I took home 4 humongous petit fors for S.

The bummers of the week are that we did not have visitation with the baby last weekend after all b/c the whore "forgot" it was our weekend. And we are still waiting today to hear from our atty. if we get this weekend as a makeup. The whore is not returning my text messages to tell us if we do or not. So--more ammunition for our court case. A lot of pain now for a lot of relief later, after we win.

Also, now my car, Blue Lou, is in the shop as of yesterday. So there's even more grief and loss of $ to deal with. I am having to bum rides from S and my coworker who lives nearby. I keep waking up in the morning with more and more gray hairs, which no, I don't appreciate! And I knew I'd be returning to a FUBAR mess at Job #1 yesterday as well, but I didn't imagine the extent to which it's ascended. And it's not over yet. I was planning on taking an entire day off on Monday to go make some $ at Job #2 but now it appears I might have to make an appearance here instead. Bullshit!!!

Here's the promised pic's from 2 weekends ago. Better late than never.

Me and baby petting sharks and stingrays. Ok, only I petted them. Baby couldn't reach and kept chickening out when I tried to help her. Baby wearing wings and tiara supplied by Ma!

There's a tiny crawlspace underneath the stingray/shark tank for chirrens. Naturally, I had to check it out. The entrance is like only 2 feet high but I couldn't resist! Later I petted that shark at top left.

The baby and me. She is pissed b/c I thought of making that cool tiger pose before she could think of it. After this she kicked me out of the picture so she could do it by herself!

Baby on the ferris wheel.
She forced me to go on this stomach-churning falling ride with her like 6 or 7 times. She said it made her tummy feel "good." I'm a big, bad, tough cop and I could barely handle it. But she's too little to ride it by herself, so that's what moms are for!