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),...
The piles on my desk threaten to topple over, I'm behind on several things, there's laundry to be done, I apparently volunteered to provide a "treat" ("Oh, you can just bake something, Mama") for Chickadee's class tomorrow, I still cannot find my sewing kit, and I'm too sleepy to make the coffee properly. Of course, none of this matters. Not since the mail came yesterday. Not since I was touched by His noodly appendage.
Oh. Um, hi. How are you? I'm, uh, perfectly fine and ready to point to the nearest shiny object to distract you from yesterday's post. Yes. (Not that I didn't appreciate both the space to get that out and the really kind emails I received, but now I'd like to go back to to sublimating my "issues"---please use heavy air quotes when reading that---and doing really meaningful things like pondering whether I really need avocados when they cost $1.50 each.) During a conversation with a friend yesterday I mentioned falling asleep at the kitchen table one night and she interrupted me to ask if...
This week the kids' school is hosting a series of curriculum nights, and although some parents I've met have skipped it because it's probably about the same every year, I went because we're new to the school and also I don't want to be marked as an uninterested parent. (There's plenty of time for that later on in the year when they need volunteers and I'm "busy," after all.) My impression of this school---the school that I pestered every member of the administration whose phone number and email I could get my hands on to get the kids into---is that they are the epitome of the old expression...
Today we went to Open House at the school where Chickadee and Monkey will be resuming their education next week. This is the school I fought tooth and nail to get them into, so believe me, I am THRILLED they're going there. We met Monkey's teacher first. She's a sweet, calm woman who is in her 40th year of teaching. She told me she's seen it all and can take whatever the kids dish out. I believed her. I sort of wanted to be in her class, myself. We met Chickadee's teacher next. I don't think she's 30 yet. She's young and pretty and nothing she did or said was a problem and yet I found myself...
The hotly anticipated bacon salt has arrived. It is everything we could've hoped for, and more. And by "and more" I of course mean that our growing dependence on delicious smoky pork-fat-flavored salt is a little frightening. We've tried it on a variety of things, and when we're not actually eating it (and murmuring---Homer Simpson-style---"Mmmmm... bacony...") we're trying to top one another in disgustingness by suggesting we put it on absolutely everything. It's more than a seasoning, it's also a fun pastime! Sort of a brain twister, you know! And something of an obsession! Hey, I was...
Otto understands me. He knows when I need chocolate. He knows when I need a hug. He corrals the kids when I need to work and he cleans up after dinner whenever I look like my eye is starting to twitch again. So the other day---and I have NO IDEA what he was doing at the time---a great cry of glee went up from the other desk in the office, and when I turned to see what was so exciting, Otto showed me this. Five minutes later, he was lamenting the fact that he hadn't kept it to himself, because that would've been an awesome birthday present for me. You see, I love bacon. I double pink puffy...
As of today, I am completely free of That Bank I Haven't Been Naming That Claims To Be The Bank Everyone In The Country Uses. I will never go back, and every time I travel out of the area and have to pay a few bucks in ATM fees, I will cheer myself up by remembering this saga as one of the most unpleasant things I've had to endure lately. It will be worth some fees now and then to no longer be in the clutches of such a consumer-unfriendly institution. And because I am me, it's not as though I was able to walk in there today and withdraw my money and continue on my merry way. Oh no. That...
I should not poke fun at people who come here via random internet searching. It's not kind, and it probably only entertains me. On the other hand, it does entertain me quite a bit, and I'm pretty much in charge, here. (Also, nothing interesting happened today unless you want to count Chickadee and Monkey begging to watch a movie before bed, and me telling them the conditions under which that would happen, and them screwing around and taking too long to eat dinner and shower, and then when I informed Chickadee that she had wasted her time and there would be no movie, she went upstairs and...
