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...
I spent all summer avoiding thinking about work, and now summer is over and I have to be an adult again. Being an adult is highly overrated. It turns out that if you're trying to shepherd a couple of kids toward adulthood, though, you kind of have to have a grasp of it, yourself. At least, that's the idea. So I keep working on it, FOR THE CHILDREN, even though I would much rather... read a book, or bake something, or bathe my cat. And you know I'm allergic to cats (even the imaginary ones I don't really own). We spend a lot of time talking about our kids growing up and changing, and not a...
I remember when preparing the kids for the start of school was practically an Olympic event. You'd get the list of school supplies and head off to your local Big Box store to buy your assigned allotment of glue sticks and whiteboard pens, and if you were supposed to have a magenta with teal striped 2.5" 3-ring binder for a particular subject, well then, you had best find yourself that exact magenta with teal stripes 2.5" 3-ring binder OR ELSE. Plus the clothes shopping. LORD. Uniforms, for the uniform years, or just replacement of what's outgrown (him) and stocking the latest trends (her)...
I view myself as a strong, independent woman. I was fine being single. I don't NEED Otto, you understand. I just WANT him. I like having him around, because he's cute and funny and my rotten children often do not laugh at my lame jokes. But I could totally manage without him if I had to, despite his frequent assertions that I married him simply either for his health insurance or because I needed a lawn boy. Once the freezer was cleaned out the other night, many items had been thrown away. Various mystery or in-need-of-disposal items, however, were in glass containers, and so we chucked them...
