We're renovating the upstairs bathroom this week. More accurately, this week I am trying to keep the dogs from going insane while a crew makes a lot of noise and a big mess. So far it doesn't look much like a bathroom, but I have high hopes. Also, it was supposed to be finished by tomorrow. HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA. Um. I am still hoping it might be done next week. Or this year. Something. My usual way of coping with the grossness my offspring proliferate in their bathroom is to... just never go in there. But until that bathroom is done, they have to use the bathroom I use. Let's just say my...
We had some scrambling to get Nerd Night rescheduled, this week, which prompted our friendly neighborhood Dungeon Master to share this with the group: It's possible it made me laugh louder and longer than was strictly necessary, but I admit to nothing. Now, normally my argument against rescheduling or canceling Nerd Night is that MONKEY WILL BE SO DISAPPOINTED, but when the subject of canceling last night or moving it to today came up, this time, like the doting mother I am, I was all YOU CANNOT CANCEL I AM ALREADY MAKING A COMPLICATED CAKE. See, Boston Cream Pie (motto: not actually pie!)...
It's been a long time since I could say this, but: It's been a pretty good year. I would like to lose 10 (20) pounds and I would like Duncan to stop getting ear infections and Licorice's breath to smell less like she just ate a bunch of cat poop (yep, the feral cats in our neighborhood are still around...) and for Otto to have a little less stress in his life and for my kids to start understanding how amazing they really are and also maybe for them to strike the phrase "in a minute" from their vocabularies... but... things are good. These are minor quibbles. To celebrate, I made a million...
Y'all are great. I love that when I ask random questions you have all sorts of answers for me. And yes, I appreciate all of them. I am now 1) smarter about hotels, 2) hoarding cookie recipes, and 3) slightly less worried about loft beds. See? IT TAKES A VILLAGE. I did get to thinking about the whole bed thing some more, yesterday, and I wrote a post for Alpha Mom and then never got around to linking it because both of my children decided yesterday would be an excellent day to fall deathly ill. Fantastic! But today one is back at school and the other is sleeping peacefully and now I...
Remember when I used to write here regularly? I can't decide if my life is less interesting now or if I just finally realized my life is not nearly as interesting as I once believed. It's probably best not to dwell on it. Today we are trying to Return To Normal Life, only that's working about as well as you might imagine when my entire family returned on Saturday, over-stimulated and under-rested. Otto is a pretty good sport, as you know---plus when he's tired he's not mean, because he is a fully evolved human---but the kids spent most of Saturday in bed and then grumbled around for a while...
I really thought that once Chickadee got her license, my life would become less complicated. Like: immediately, and exponentially less complicated. Because everyone knows that just when you feel like your kids have reached an age of relative self-sufficiency, you are then relegated to 24/7 chauffeur status for years while they are too old for you to micromanage their lives but too young to handle their own transportation. To some extent it's true that things are easier now, in the sense that I am no longer driving back and forth to school more often than not, because I can let the kids take...
It has come to my attention that my perception of "normal" may be... a little off. Weird, right? I---and my family/home---am the picture of boring normalness, surely. (Voices in my head: Yeah, no. Also, don't call me Shirley.) I mean, doesn't everyone reassure others about their competence by announcing that they're a dog door? No? Or own their stupidity by exclaiming "Gorgonzola!"? Also no? Weird. For some reason, this morning, I started thinking about all of the weird little things which happen around here and strike me as perfectly normal even though it's POSSIBLE that they're not. Or...
I've got sleep on my mind, because we are currently experiencing a shortage. It's no one's fault, really, it's just a lot of stuff on the schedule and less-than-ideal time management and the usual crop of minor crises. Everything's fine. We're just tired. It did seem like a golden opportunity to make with many words about how important sleep is to growing teens, though. I swear I am more or less following my own advice, it's just that life is unpredictable and also morning seems to come very early. You can read more on Alpha Mom while I fantasize about taking a nap. (I won't actually be...
We are all trying to get settled into the school routine now that we're back to it, and it's been long enough that it's not feeling new, but short enough that we're still sort of hoping it might be a mistake and it's still summer. I'm not really sure what's happening. Mornings haven't been too bad just yet (I wrecked it by saying that, I'm aware), but evenings are proving challenging. I forgot that when everyone doesn't get home until after seven, I really have to crack that whip and shove dinner in front of everyone to keep the evening moving along. (But why are they late? They had cake...
