Sometimes, having a record of our lives is awesome. Every now and then I will go back and read something in my archives and be AMAZED, because I'd completely forgotten said event until reading about it and reawakening that memory. I'm constantly grateful for that when it comes to the day-to-day marvels of raising small humans. Other times, I have to go silent for several days in a row, because it's the kind of weekend that ends with a hysterical child and me Googling "how to remove (ripped,partial) contact lens?" and that, my friends, is the BEST thing that happened in those three days. I am...
Once upon a time, on a day when I brought Mario home to our house after school, the boys played and played and played some more, and when Mario's dad came to pick him up, he said, "Hey, we're going to Crazy's for dinner tonight, y'all want to come?" [Crazy's is not really the name of the restaurant. I have changed the name to protect the... crazy.] Monkey, of course, immediately began begging to go too, so we all went to Crazy's together and it was there that Mario corrupted my son. But first, let me back up a minute. We don't eat out all that often, partly because of cost and partly because...
I am fresh out of magical solutions to the recent Year Of Continuing Suckage, so I did what any red-blooded American female with a weakness for cute shoes would do: I spent a couple of weeks dressing up to see if it helped me feel better. Read all about it over at Off Our Chests, if you like. Mostly because I'm pretty sure that two consecutive weeks of me wearing mascara every single day is one of the signs of the Apocalypse.
I lamented to Otto this morning that "I don't have anything interesting to write about!" Otto---deeply embroiled in the home stretch of grading and finishing up the semester---gave me several suggestions of guffaw-worthy student gaffes, none of which I'm actually going to share. That's mostly because they're not my stories, but also because I don't want Otto to lose his job. He's so nice to the students' faces; there's no need for them to know he makes fun of them here at home.* Um. Oops? See, the problem is that all I want right now is... nothing. No drama. No excitement. I want boring and...
After eight years of babbling about my innermost feelings online, I've learned a lot of things. Mostly I've learned that you'd much rather we talk about my hair than my angst. (I'm trying not to take it personally.) People who know me in real life (a.k.a. Friendship Outside The Shiny Box) generally fell into two camps after I wrote about my hair last month: The first group read that post, called me up to say, "Really? REALLY?" and then forgot about it, while the second group called me up to lobby their specific preference and then came back a time or two (or twelve) over the next few weeks...
You may remember that one piece of my recent weekend of doing pretty much nothing included a landscaping estimate. This is because my darling husband seems to believe that the outside of our house is supposed to look a certain way. I'm not saying he's wrong, I'm just saying I'm a lot better at, shall we say, selective visual fields than he is. Why, the weekend before the do-nothing weekend, Otto had declared a family yard pick-up day, and I'm not saying it didn't look great when we were done, I'm just saying that this is a Mars/Venus issue. What I think when I look at the front yard: Grass!...
[Thank you for the sweet comments yesterday. I'm pleased to report that the day did indeed improve, thank God, and a good time and a massive chocolate-cake-stupor was enjoyed by all yesterday evening. Go make this flourless cake immediately, whether you're gluten-free or not. I may never make anything else again.] So I've been meaning to tell you this story for a while, but it was while rereading yesterday's post and saying to my husband, "HAHA! You can't tell I'm off my meds at all from that! HAAAAA!" that I realized it was time for a good-size dose of levity---the kind of levity that only...
A handy guide to Fun and Hilarity for your weekend, if you happen to be me and have lofty plans of how supergreat your weekend is going to be in spite of the fact that you neglect to actually plan it out in any way, shape or form. If you are a beginner, don't attempt all of these options in a single weekend. Pace yourself! But if you're me, you can indeed find a way to cram all of these events into a single two-day stretch. People, I'm a professional. Without further ado, things to do on the weekend: 1) Nothing. Doing nothing isn't as easy as it sounds, because rarely does one truly do...
Monkey has an appointment on Thursday with the ENT who did last year's surgery, because it turns out that Monkey's sinuses are still assholes. Monkey has sounded like an 80-year-old lifelong three-pack-a-day smoker for a couple of weeks, now, and his behavior indicates that the poor little dude is just feeling miserable. But true to his usual form, he has no fever, claims he feels "fine," and basically I only know something is wrong because he's spending more time as Mr. Hyde than Dr. Jekyll, if you catch my drift. And we ALMOST made it to Thursday, too, but... well, Otto took the boys to...
