Today, for the first time in a very long time, I woke up to an empty house. No, there hadn’t been some Twilight Zone-esque occurrence where everyone in the world but me disappeared, and no, Heather hadn’t left me because of my tendency to leave the kitchen cupboards open. I was alone (except for Rigby, of course) because Heather had already taken off for work and Heather’s parents had picked up Maddie for the day. It was nice not to wake to a screaming baby who needed immediate attention in the form of a diaper change, food, and breathing treatments, but it was strange. It made me think about how not too long ago every day started in this mellow manner. Those days were awesome, but I wouldn’t want them back if it meant not having Maddie around.

Maddie was being taken by her grandparents to a private Catholic high school for girls where one of their friends, Sue, works as a religion teacher. Back when things were really dicey with Maddie, Sue had asked her students to pray for Maddie. They did so, and the next day, when Maddie was still alive, they prayed again. They ended up praying like this until Maddie left the NICU and as a result became very invested in her. The students were shown photos of Maddie and pronounced her adorable (duh!) but had never seen her. Today, as a surprise for them on their last day of school, Sue had arranged for Maddie to appear as a surprise guest. The girls went crazy upon seeing Maddie walk into, er, be carried into the room, and a few even declared that they wanted to have a baby right then! That’s how cute my baby is, people. She single handedly is going to be responsible for a spike in our nation’s teen pregnancy epidemic.

Anyway, while all of this was going on I was at home with the opportunity to kick back and relax for once. I did just that for about ten minutes before I realized that this was my chance to really clean the heck out of our dirty ass place without having to check on the baby every two seconds. For the next five hours I cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned until the place was presentable enough that if someone came to the door I wouldn’t have to just crack open the door and peep out of it like I was growing pot plants inside. The amazing thing though, is that this is how I chose to spend my day alone. It’s weird how being a parent makes you all responsible and stuff.

Before I sign off on this here post I thought I’d mention something sort of funny. I use WordPress to host my site, and at the end of every post it automatically generates “possibly related” posts. Well, last night, after publishing my post about Rigby, I felt a little awkward about having professed my love for a five pound ball of fluff in such a public way. Heather told me not to worry about it, but It didn’t help that WordPress’ chose to emasculate me further by saying the “possibly related” posts included: “The Power of a Child’s Voice!” and “Little Girl Lost!” Oh well. This little girl isn’t so lost.