I'm a big believer in a little bit of special all the time, rather than a whole lot of special just once in a while. It's just how I am. Not that I'll turn down the occasional grandiose gesture, you understand, but I am not a Special Occasion person. I'm a Little Details person. Usually. Needless to say, every now and then I trip myself up. I get a wild hair---I decide I Must Do Something Special---and nine times out of ten it results in an unmitigated disaster. Give you a kiss every morning? Sure! Do your laundry? Okay! Make your dinner? Absolutely! Plan something extra special? Um, please...
I recently had a discussion via email with a friend who ever-so-gently pointed out that when I don't either blog about things or communicate them to friends in another (more direct) manner, they don't know what's going on with me. I scoffed, because I've long made it a habit to only befriend people who are PSYCHIC. It cuts down on the effort I have to make, you know. Well, okay, not really. What I HAVE done, actually, is put my head down and stuffed my fingers in my ears and loudly "LA LA LA LA LA LA"ed my way through some things happening around here because there comes a times when my wee...
Today we went on a wild, day-long adventure, which included going panning for gold. As we stood clustered around a trough, each swishing around our pans, Monkey jabbered a mile a minute and Chickadee complained a couple of times that the water was too cold, but in the end, each of us had successfully isolated a few flakes of gold, which was then placed into a vial we could keep. The children were ecstatic. For about ten seconds. We then had to wait a bit before it was our turn to go on a tour of the mine, and for a moment I actually GOT SMART and went and bought the kids a snack to head off...
I think I've mentioned before that at some point I became overwhelmed with this weird THING that compelled me to sign up for a committee in the name of bettering our schools. (Oh... right. I think that THING may be "a sense of parental and civic responsibility," but on the other hand, maybe it's just a mild case of Athlete's Foot, because it's sort of itchy.) On the one hand, I know it's tiresome to keep up with the "OMG! WTF is the matter with the schools here?" routine, because I've done it before, for one thing, and also, HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU HAVE? On the other hand, every time I sort of...
... is Friday's moron. I'm going to have that embroidered on a sampler, and I'm going to mount it here on the wall of my office. Oh yes. Yes, I shall. Oh Mondays, I am brilliant. It's a new day! A new week! And THIS WEEK, I shall triumph. I will be on top of my game. Work will melt away under my fingertips, the children will be delightful and charming, the house will be clean, and late at night I will sidle up to my husband and whisper something a little more sexy than, "I am so tired right now I could cry, if only I had the energy." On Mondays, all things are possible. By Friday, I'm just a...
Dudes. DUDES. Your affection for my dad warms the cockles of my shriveled, blackened heart. And I'm not the only one. Why, first Otto weighed in with boundless love: Geez, your dad's more popular than our wedding.... [Ed. note: Nope, the posts about our wedding still have more comments, but not by much!] And then, of course, my father wasn't kidding about sending the post out to everyone he knows. He emailed the link far and wide, which resulted in the entry being visited by people who normally never read me, like my brother. Who then suggested that what Dad really wants is a chicken,...
It is possible to be a Stanford-educated professional-type adult, to spend half the morning pondering---once again---how it's really time to figure out how to incorporate an exercise routine into your life, because you're too sedentary, after all, plus those pesky ten pounds don't seem to be losing themselves (go figure), and to simultaneously vow, as well, to start eating better, YOU REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME, because you're getting older and it's important, sheesh, woman, it's time to make your health a priority... ... and to then look up a sinful chocolate cake recipe online because you're...
Yesterday was a whirlwind of travel, putting us at one friend's house for the afternoon, then shuffling off to another friend's house for the night. I guess Otto hadn't been entirely clear with this group of pals as to when we'd be where, so although they were delighted to have us (and OH MY GOD I had the best meal of my LIFE last night; I am thinking of asking his friends to come move in with us, because: EMERIL'S POTATO CASSEROLE), the hosts who were keeping us for the night hadn't actually made up the guest bed yet. So we'd watched the first half of the Patriots game at the first house...
A few days ago Chickadee kept saying GORGONZOLA over and over, until Monkey started doing it, too, and before long they were both in the kitchen, bouncing up and down, chanting "GOR-GON-ZO-LA! GOR-GON-ZO-LA!" "Why are you doing that?" I asked. (Because I am foolish and expect my children to make sense, even though nearly ten years of experience has never borne out this hypothesis in the slightest.) "I don't know," Chickie replied. "It's just fun to say. GOR-GON-ZO-LA!" "GOR-GON-ZO-LA!" Monkey added, for good measure. "Do you even know what gorgonzola is?" I pressed. "Yes," retorted...
