Yes yes… I know… for you, dear readers, there was never a departure from boring. Ever since I started working again, a huge percentage of my life has become Off Limits as blog fodder; hence my entries have become rarer, less interesting, and decidedly more cheerful, which–as we all know–results in way less of The Funny. But it turns out that for me this weekend’s visit from my father and stepmom was a welcome departure from boring, and as they have now headed home, it’s back to Regular Life here at Casa Mir.

[Except for this brief non-sequitor: I had a most entertaining IM conversation this afternoon which turned to the topic of breasts (of course). As my discussion partner is male and I love to get the Y chromosome view of things, I asked him if he subscribed to the “more than a handful’s wasted” theory of boobage, to which he responded that “they’re sort of like saran wrap… once you have enough for the task at hand, figuring out how to deal with the extra is sort of tricky.” I laughed so hard my children thought I was having a seizure. And I may be paraphrasing badly and he can correct me if he so wishes.]

Anyway, a weekend with Grandma and Grandpa is So! Exciting! All! The! Time!

But, alas, they packed up and started for home after lunch. Which left just us three. And I headed for the clean laundry (which had been giving me the hairy eyeball from the baskets in my bedroom all weekend, where it had sat, untouched) and my children began some camping game in Monkey’s room. I sorted and folded and put away clothing and sheets and towels. The kids took out various unseeming camping-related objects…
“Monkey, you go get the ribbon off of my dresser and I’ll grab the empty pop-tart box. Here, take these flashcards, too.”
“Okay, then we can put them in the this backpack along with this skirt and my stuffed elephant and this handful of legos, Chickie! Also, don’t forget the hammer!”
… and then took turns laying down in the “tent” they’d erected and yelling at each other to go to sleep already.

It was peaceful, really.

After a while, the laundry baskets were empty and the closets and dressers were full, and all of the imaginary bears and snakes and dinosaurs had finished storming the campground and it was time to head back to civilization and full pop-tart boxes. We all trooped downstairs. I sat down at the computer, and found myself in the very deep and meaningful IM discussion mentioned earlier.

Chickadee opened the dress-up bin and outfitted herself in a red sequined bowtie and a beautiful white gown roughly two sizes too small. She commanded Monkey to don fringed cowboy pants, the smiley-face vest, and a toucan hat. Chickadee was now ready to sit on the couch and read a book. (She was terribly underdressed beforehand, I suppose.) Monkey decided to take out his Spiderman Memory Cards, and informed me that I would be playing a game with him but I wouldn’t have to do anything.

“Oooookay…?” quoth I.

“I will take care of everything!” he assured me. “See, you take these cards, and I take these cards, and then you have to look at the card on the bottom here except I will do it for you and see, it’s not like this other one so I get half your pile. And now I turn one over and it means I get some more of your cards but it’s okay, because now I see you have Dr. Octopus and that means I have to give you four cards. Phew! So you get those and now I have a pair over here so I’m going to give you this wild card and oh no, look what I have, it’s a big Spidey! You have to give me all your cards! I win!”

“Oh.” Keep in mind that I hadn’t had a chance to even figure out what we were doing. But it seemed like I should say something.

“Wanna play again, Mama?”

Yep, everything’s back to normal.