October 6, 2007 | The Year of Living Changerously

We have been taping Mythbusters every week and watching it as a family on Friday nights, but there hasn’t been a new episode in a while so we’ve had to come up with another activity to celebrate making it through the week. Thus began a brief period of trial and error, wherein we discovered that laundry is perhaps not quite celebratory enough, while body shots may be just a tad overdoing it.

So last night we decided to play Uno. Otto announced that it would be cutthroat Uno, meaning that everyone was expected to play to win, which the kids took to mean that the first time they each had to draw extra cards they should cry. After a quick pause to explain that anyone who couldn’t suck it up and draw cards without sobbing could go to bed early, instead, we then launched into a very merry round of cards indeed. (more…)

October 3, 2007 | The Year of Living Changerously

It must be Fall because it’s dark when my alarm goes off and dark when I wake the kids up and dark while I pack lunches but almost sorta kinda getting light out when it’s time to leave for school.

It must be Fall because the yard is covered with fallen leaves. The fact that the trees are still covered in (green) leaves is a little confusing, sure, and I hear that a drought can make the leaves fall off, too, plus the fact that it is still hitting 85 every day is not feeling all that Fall-like, but—what was I talking about?—oh, right, the leaves on the grass mean it must be Fall.

It must be Fall because we crack the windows at night and let the cool air snake over the windowsills and down the wall, where it creeps along until it find my toes (which I am always surprised to discover are growing chilly). (more…)

September 25, 2007 | Offspring: ecstasy and agony, The Year of Living Changerously

I am going senile. Not only did I use “Meanwhile, back at the ranch” as a post title once before, I used it only about a month ago. I never would’ve even realized this, except that I happened to notice that the permalink for yesterday’s post had a “2″ at the end, and being the bright human that I am, I went, “Huh. I wonder why that is?”

Now I’m afraid to title anything, for fear that I’ve just plain run out of titles. Please look for my next book, coming soon (and by “soon” I mean “never”) to a bookstore near you. It will be called “Insert title here.” It’s riveting stuff, I tell you.

Anyway, despite my best efforts to forge a believable story arc out of three cups of coffee and some string, today is just going to be a One Of Those Days. I can tell. Nevertheless, I shall soldier on, making with the words and then maybe some more words, because I’m a giver. I care. Oh, wait. Maybe that’s I’m a talker and I talk. I always get those confused. (more…)

September 13, 2007 | Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, The Year of Living Changerously

As I may have alluded to here once or twice (ha!), my transition to southern belle has been a little rocky. I love it here, I really do; this town is, as I’m fond of saying, very much like my hometown but with more bacon. In the sense that a new area could feel like HOME purely on objective environment, it’s aces. Nevertheless, it’s a new place and that brings its own stressors along with it, like having to find everything again and make new friends and just feel like I BELONG.

I don’t know if you have noticed this, because I hide it so well (what with the being incredibly suave and all), but I am sort of an awkward person in general. In any given situation I am apt to manage to meet the bare minimum of polite interaction while feeling like a giant Fakey McFakerpants on the inside, so this elusive feeling of BELONGING is something that doesn’t come easily to me, even when I HAVEN’T just uprooted my entire life and moved to a different part of the country. (more…)

September 10, 2007 | It's not a regret, it's an "experience", The Year of Living Changerously

Last night in bed (oh, how my husband’s throat must close up to see me starting a sentence on my blog that way, it makes me giggle) I grabbed Otto and insisted there was a SNAKE! SNAKE IN THE BED! And he did not seem to find it all that amusing. I cannot imagine why. Because I thought it was completely hilarious. I plan to preface all important announcements this way from now on. Just because I think it’s a snappy way to get someone’s attention.

He got me back this morning, though. Oh yes he did. Not only did I have to rise at the buttcrack of dawn and get the kids ready for school, after they were dropped off Otto made me go exercise with him! To be fair, we’d discussed this last night, but last night it seemed like a really good idea, this whole “morning walk” thing, and this morning, going back to bed seemed like a MUCH BETTER IDEA. Alas. (more…)

September 6, 2007 | Health is overrated, The Year of Living Changerously

Dude, yesterday was like Christmas. New computer! New iPod! New scanner/printer/copier thing that may or may not also julienne vegetables!

My wee little mind, it is blown.

Anyway, I have to remain Very! Excited! about all of this, to help lessen the reaction I will have when the bill arrives. I mean, yes, business deductions and all of that (the printer and iPod were free, even), but you know, it PAINS ME to spend money. Especially since it’s not as though I can recoup the money from my other stupid computers. Otto did suggest that we get a boat… seeing as how we’d be all set for anchors…. (Ba dum DUM!)

I got a three-year warranty, so there will be no more flagrant spending of technology funds for at least that long. And I will continue to ignore Otto’s excited babbling about the drop in price on the iPhone because I CANNOT HEAR HIM LALALALALALALA! (more…)

September 1, 2007 | The Year of Living Changerously, What do I do all day?

I guess I considered myself an involved parent when it came to our old school. I volunteered at school; I belonged to the PTA; I brought stuff in when the teachers needed things. Whatever. None of it required all that much effort on my part, is my point.

And I am nothing if not lazy by nature.

It’s become apparently very quickly that the new school—having less money, fewer resources, and plenty of parents who don’t help out in any way—needs a lot more in the way of parental participation. I am trying to do my part even though, honestly, sometimes it feels like Just One More Thing piled on top of an already overfull schedule. (more…)

August 27, 2007 | It's not a regret, it's an "experience", The Year of Living Changerously

Despite a small segment of my readers’ seeming beliefs to the contrary, I don’t actually write about EVERYTHING. I write about LOTS of things, and I write about some stuff that I’m sure some people wish I wouldn’t, but this is but a small, self-selected slice of my life, and there are a million and one reasons to be selective about what I put out here.

Figuring prominently in that laundry list of constraints are my readers who are known to me, such as my family and friends, and my desire not to vex them any more than is strictly necessary. Also on that list is the fact that my ex is reading here regularly despite assertions that he most certainly is not. And then of course we have the workings of my brain (such as it is) that insist that sharing things that make me look stupid are fine, whereas sharing things that make me look vulnerable are not. Stupid is funny. Weak is just pitiful. (more…)

August 20, 2007 | It's not a regret, it's an "experience", The Year of Living Changerously

(Not to be confused with this rockin’ mama over here, you understand, but I believe there’s enough asshole to go around.)

Recently those of us participating in BlogHerAds were asked to state for the record whether or not we could commit to profanity-free writing as—go figure—some advertisers would rather not spend their dollars on pottymouths. Although I didn’t have to think twice about checking the “I do hereby solemnly swear to use my genteel language and only fart butterflies” box over on Want Not, after some thought I decided that I wasn’t comfortable making that pledge here. Because although as a writer I generally feel that there are better ways to express yourself than profanity, sometimes nothing else will do.

Sometimes you just have to be able to say, “God. I’m such an asshole.” (more…)

August 17, 2007 | It's not a regret, it's an "experience", The Year of Living Changerously

Today is a particularly good Friday. The children have nearly made it through their first week of school, and to celebrate that we decided they could ride the bus home this afternoon. This has less to do with any reward logic (because, let’s face it, they’d much rather be picked up and we’re all a bit worried about what happens on the bus) and more to do with things like since it’s the end of the week, if the experience scars them horribly I have all weekend to help them get over it; plus yesterday the crossing guard lady yelled at me in the pick-up line and I realized that if I continue picking them up every day I am going to die young. Because for days now I have watched people cut in front of me in line and I have seethed in silence, and yesterday I went around a PARKED AND EMPTY car and this lady came up to my car and told me to GO TO THE BACK OF THE LINE FOR CUTTING. At which point I reverted back to my most primitive New Yorker roots and said to her, “You have GOT to be kidding me, lady.” So.

Also, tonight we are having what I have been promised is the best cake in the world on account of I have managed to stay in (more or less) one piece for thirty six whole years. (more…)