Woulda Coulda Shoulda

1) We are going to the county fair today. We planned to go first thing; it is now 3:00 and we haven’t left yet. Which is a pretty good summary of life with children, really.

2) I’m having a terrible time with my skin right now (and I haven’t been eating wheat, so either I’m intolerant to something new or my skin is just finicky, or BOTH, AWESOME) and that always results in a weird amalgamation of both acne and cracking/peeling dry skin. (Me so sexy.) This morning while putting on earrings I discovered my earlobes are peeling. MY EARLOBES ARE PEELING. My new death metal band is called Scaly Earlobes.

3) A couple of nights ago I inadvertently let some weird huge bug into the house when I came in, so being the mature adult I am, I commanded Licorice to eat it. She obliged—sort of—by grabbing it and bringing it into my office and LEAVING IT ON THE COUCH FOR ME. She is so grounded.

If we do not leave for the fair in the next 15 minutes I am not buying anyone a funnel cake. IT IS TIME TO HAVE FUN, DAMMIT. HURRY UP.

I used to regularly post about the search terms that brought people to the site, and somewhere along the way I stopped doing it. Probably because 1) I stopped actually checking my stats all that often, because once you’ve passed the “Hey, I think people other than my parents and my best friend are actually visiting my blog!” point, it just isn’t all that exciting, and 2) it’s entirely possible that I realized it was uninteresting.

Today, however, I’ve got nothing. Well, nothing other than my dog decided to cry and howl at midnight for no discernible reason and I was immediately catapulted back to those horrible first-time-mother newborn days when I spent a lot of time wondering if maybe my baby was in terrible pain and I was the world’s worst mother for not knowing how to fix it.

[In this case, apparently the dog had to pee, and then once we did that she just thought it might be a good time to play. I think. When I sent a panicked email about it all to the Dog Whisperer---now THERE's someone who's doubtless wishing she could un-know me right about now, with my Puppy Angst and hysterical middle-of-the-night emails---she suggested a squirt bottle full of battery acid to quell rowdiness if it happened again.] (more…)

So we spent the day checking out Gettysburg, which was really just enough time for us to realize that we should’ve planned to spend at least two days here, if not a full week. Nevertheless, we crammed as much into the day as we possibly could (and I will tell you about it soon), and finally capped off the adventure with ice cream at an old-fashioned malt shop before coming back to the campground.

After a day spent wandering around in the heat, learning more Civil War history than a person can reasonably be expected to digest, ice cream is the perfect reward, no? Well, perhaps not if you’re saddled with meanies for parental units who settle the negotiating over various confections by pointing out that a single scoop of ice cream in a waffle cone costs exactly the same as a double scoop on a regular cone, and probably has an equivalent amount of sugar, too.

Given a choice between the two, which do you then choose for the most optimal, bang-for-your-buck dessert experience? Please show your work.

Funny thing about taking a mini-vacation from your stress: It’s right there, waiting for you, when you get back. Hmph.

And so today I can only offer this COMPLETELY hypothetical question, inspired by someone else, someone who is NOT ME:

Have you ever actually pulled a muscle in your arm while attempting to get into your “slimming” bathing suit? And if so, clearly that’s an indictment of the suit, and neither your arm nor the ass the suit got momentarily snagged on, right?

I’m just curious. Because I’m a seeker of knowledge. Yes.

It’s supposed to be 89 degrees here today. EIGHTY. NINE. DEGREES. In April.

(Nope, I don’t think I will ever get used to it. That’s some craziness, right there.)

When we did the big closet clean-out a few weeks ago, we took a load of the kids’ outgrown clothes to our local consignment shop, and picked up a few new things. Amongst them was a smocked sundress for Chickadee, suitable for Georgia summer, but completely UNsuitable for the 50- and 60-degree weather we were having at the time. She has asked to wear that damn dress every single day since we bought it. Yesterday I checked the forecast and she said, “NOW can I wear my new dress tomorrow??” I said sure, and now I’m the greatest person in the whole wide world. (Until I do something that offends her, of course. I’ve got that scheduled for about five minutes after the kids get home from school today. I figured I’d give her time to have a snack, first.)

Also, my garden is growing by leaps and bounds and the pollen is starting to dissipate a bit, but none of these things are the reason why I know it’s summer. (more…)

I’ve been on a bit of a tear around here, lately. It’s the spring cleaning bug, dontcha know. I start out cleaning, and then I plant an entire garden, and then half of it dies in a freak frost, and then I start spending hours outside, begging tiny wilted stumps of plants to JUST GROW. When that doesn’t work, I move on to other domestic chores.

All of which is to say, I can’t really babble for all that long, today, because I’m busy baking working like I’m supposed to. Ahem.

But I’d like to conduct a little informal poll. Say you’d been living in a house for coming up on two years, and you still had three unpacked boxes in your bedroom which had been opened, pawed through, rearranged, and then disregarded for who knows how long. Would you 1) go through them again, vowing to unpack or throw away or just 2) throw away without opening? I’m curious.

Also, would you list your first-wedding gown on eBay with an appropriately snarky commentary or would you just give it to Goodwill? And how much penance is appropriate for forcing your husband to live with your old wedding gown for two years, anyway?

Oh my goodness. You people are NUTS. I mean, I mean that in the best possible way. Like, gorgeous, generous and oh-by-the-way, INSANE. The current high bid on the Wii to benefit my kids’ school is $375 as of this writing. Which is crazy. And I thank EVERYONE who has bid so far so, SO much. You still have until nearly midnight tomorrow if you’ve been smoking a particularly large amount of crack and want to bid even HIGHER, which gets you the Wii, a copy of Sleep Is for the Weak, and the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing you’ve really made a difference for a school in need.

And speaking of that little book thing, I’m doing a signing today at the Athens, GA Borders on Alps Road at 1:00 p.m. Come on over! I will not be auctioning any Wiis there, but I will be signing books and giving out Eco-Libris stickers and maybe telling embarrassing stories. Which is pretty much what I do here, every day (the embarrassing stories part, anyway), but it’ll be EVEN MORE GREAT because of that whole socially awkward thing. Yes. I hope to see some of you there!