Greetings from my very quiet, very not-filled-with-frantic-cooking house. I am busy working in my pajamas and the dogs are very busy holding down the floor in my office, and this is very much like a lot of other days in my life because, hey, freelancing is all about not having to put on real pants. But it is also unlike other days because USUALLY on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I am baking and prepping while the teenagers alternately complain that there is nothing to eat and insist they're not hungry yet. This year, though, I got a good night's sleep last night while my children stayed...
In an interesting the-universe-has-a-weird-sense-of-humor turn of events, I received a fairly heartbreaking question for my Alpha Mom column on the same day that Chickadee received her first college acceptance. (This is the school she'll attend, but not her only application, so I say "first," but really, it should be "one and only that matters so far as she's concerned.") It was right around this time, about four years ago, that we started a long, slow slide into the darkness 'round here. Every time I thought it couldn't get worse, it did, and usually exponentially so. There were a lot of...
I realized I may have---in my attempts to be privacy-shielding and vague---accidentally left the impression that the sky was falling with that last post. And no, I wasn't smart enough to figure it out on my own; rather, after a bunch of concerned emails followed by one from my dad asking what was going on, it occurred to me that sometimes I need to distinguish between "feeling miserable here" and "genuine crisis here." So. Um. Oops? I'm sorry! And thank you for the concern! Long story short, Monkey has been ill, but in that special Monkey-licious Aspie way of "NO I AM FINE I JUST HATE...
Everything is fine. In the grand scheme, that is. Everyone's basically okay, there's nothing here we can't handle, and yet... it's been a hard week or two for various reasons. I'm finding that the interesting thing about being a family who's weathered some Serious Shit is that when a problem crops up, you'd think (correction: I'D think) that we'd sort of go, "Oh hey, no biggie, we've handled WAY worse than this!" The reality is that a problem crops up and everyone melts into a puddle of OH GOD NO NOT THIS AGAIN because emotions have a way of beating out rational thought, every time. It's...
So my folks were here visiting for a bit, did I mention that? My father checked the blog one morning and then said, "Your readers aren't going to like us." "Huh?" I said, because I'm eloquent and stuff. "When we're here you don't blog," he said. And then I laughed and laughed, because I barely blog when they're not here, but I like that he's willing to take the blame. Oh, I didn't write here for several weeks? Totally my dad's fault. Sorry. Our house is laid out such that 1) our master is on the first floor with the kids upstairs (this will be important in a minute) and 2) although there are...
For some reason, we don't really get trick-or-treaters at our house. This means I buy a bunch of candy "just in case" and then no one comes and then a month later I wonder why I'm fat. It's a mystery! I wonder if I'll ever solve it! Nonetheless, some Halloween merriment did commence. Monkey had been declaring himself the symbol of American freedom for months, so it was a natural choice for AP Dress-Up Day for him to go as, well, the symbol of American freedom: (I think his teacher liked it. At least, midday I got a text asking where I'd gotten the wings. I'm going to assume Monkey got his...
You are just never going to guess what happened to me today. NOPE. NOT THAT. Why, today marks the fifth time in 4 years that my Discover card was hijacked. I have no idea why I'm so popular---or why the dirtbags who try to use it always go spend it so stupidly that Discover immediately catches on---but there you go. (Lest you think I exaggerate: I give you January of this year, August 2014, January 2014, and November of 2011, otherwise known as Saladgate.) Feeling a little light in the wallet? Just steal my Discover number. Everybody's doing it. Anyhoo. That put a crimp in my day, and so I...
It's time once again for an installment of "Mir pretends to know things about parenting." I'm your host, and you probably shouldn't listen to anything I say. With that confidence-inspiring intro, I give you my latest Q&A over on Alpha Mom: How do you make your kid dress appropriately for the weather?
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...
