Happy days are here again
I have heat. I have electricity. I have hot water. The children went back to school today (can I get an “AMEN!” please).
And lo, it is all VERY VERY GOOD.
I mean, not that I didn’t totally enjoy finally using my tub, yesterday, finally. I’ve never used that tub before. And while it MAY have been slightly more convenient to, you know, have hot water running out of the tap instead of coming from the eleventeen trips I made between the kitchen and the bathroom with my many pots of boiling water, and while some might argue that being able to fill it up rather than just sliding around in a few inches of water while trying to figure out how to best wash my hair wasn’t ENTIRELY relaxing, hey, at least I got to use my tub.
Remember the deal with my tub? I like to refer to it as Faucetgate. read more…
Warm, but grumpy
Yesterday we spent a fun-filled afternoon deep in family togetherness, by which I mean we went to Otto’s office and parked the children with their Nintendo DSs while Otto and I did some work. The kids thought they’d died and gone to heaven when they complained of hunger mid-afternoon and we took them to the VENDING MACHINES and let them each pick out their own pouch of high fructose corn syrup-laden, salty fatty goodness.
Finally, our relentless phone calls back to the house yielded a pick-up by our crappy answering machine, and lo, we knew power and order had been restored. We returned, and celebrated with reheated lasagna.
I also sent Monkey upstairs to shower, as the children were beginning to become a bit fragrant. (Otto and I know how to wash up in the dark in the sink with cold water without screaming [much]. The kids, well, I was choosing my battles.) read more…
FYI
FYI, when a big piece of your tree falls over for no reason, it’s a pretty sure bet that most of the rest of the tree will fall over if you get a really heavy snowfall. And of course THAT section of tree will fall RIGHT ACROSS THE DRIVEWAY.
FYI, your husband will not find it humorous when you keep stomping around the house, occasionally gesturing to the tree which has formed a barricade to your escape, declaring, “APOCALYPSE. NOW!”
FYI, when the power goes out for two hours in the afternoon and then comes back on, you would be very foolish to assume that everything is fine now.
FYI, cooking dinner while the power is back is a pretty good idea, though. Just cook something QUICK.
FYI, the power will go out the second time just as it’s starting to get dark. And you will realize that all of the flashlights are dead. And you have no battery-powered radio. And really, um, perhaps someone should’ve done some emergency preparedness or something. read more…
Next project: Indoor bouncy house
It’s been raining. And raining. And today, it’s supposed to SNOW! (Translation, for those who don’t live in Georgia: The forecast is calling for ten flakes of snow mixed with our rain. BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES AND CLEAN OUT THE GROCERY STORES!)
There’s an interesting chain reaction that happens ’round here when we cannot go outside to play. First, Monkey gets a little… ummm… tense. Monkey is sort of like a human border collie; we often joke that he’s fine as long as he’s allowed to carry heavy things and run and feel useful. On a rainy day when he can’t adequately disperse his energy, he morphs into LITTLE BROTHER personified. In other words, he tries to get his kicks by repeating everything we say, poking his sister, following people around a mere centimeter behind them, and doing the backstroke in the middle of the kitchen floor.
It’s cute. For about a second. Then it’s rather trying. read more…
Love knows what you need
Otto and I had an appointment to attend this morning, and I was dragging. Badly.
I’m on a new hormone regimen. I’ve been getting migraines again. Now, I’m pretty sure the migraines started before I switched my meds, and I know I need to be patient to see if this fixes things or not—the joy of migraines is that they often beget themselves, so once I get on the migraine train it’s often a while before I can get off again—but in the meantime I’m apt to wake up with a migraine and flop around like a very grumpy beached fish while waiting for my meds to kick in and make me human again.
So we got the kids up and off to school, then I tried to get some work done, and Otto sat across from me here in the office and kept saying, “Are you okay?” like it wasn’t totally normal for me to be sitting here all slant-eyed and grumpy. Huh. read more…
Words failed to capture it
I love my children. I love my children I love my children I love my children Ilovemychildren.
Even if they are TRYING TO KILL ME.
Look; after the last-minute science project We Had Words. (Most of them were even not curses!) Chickadee agreed that she would no longer do her work at the last minute. She would budget her time better. She would get things done using all of the time allotted to her. Things Would Be Different.
I bet you have NO IDEA where this is going, right? read more…
They do not like it, Sam-I-Am
It’s been nearly four months since my daughter went vegetarian, and so far everyone is still alive. I would say our meat consumption as a family has gone down by about 50%, and my love of black beans has gone up about 500%.
Chickadee appears to be having no trouble sticking to her new lifestyle, and I have only found Otto hiding behind the house gnawing on a T-bone once. (I’m kidding.) (It was a package of sausage.)
Sometimes I make a “meat” entree for the rest of us and a “faux meat analog” for my daughter, of course, but a lot of the time I try to make a vegetarian meal that everyone will like. And we have several recipes in the rotation that everyone enjoys. read more…
Saint
So, um, I guess we are getting to be People Of A Certain Age.
I realized this recently because:
1) A friend of mine told me her husband was getting a vasectomy,
2) The husband knew I knew,
3) I told MY husband,
and
4) The next time we were all together my husband mercilessly ribbed my friend’s husband about it.
There was a time when such knowledge would’ve offended Otto’s delicate sensibilities. I mean, there was probably NEVER a time when it would’ve offended ME, but we already know that I am largely without shame. Still, brazen offers of frozen peas and scotch delivery in mixed company seem a bit beyond the pale. read more…
Cleaning day, day of reckoning
Yesterday I went on a cleaning tear, largely because I had one of those days last week when I looked around the house and realized that I couldn’t remember when we’d last cleaned, and also that there were tumbleweeds of carpet fuzz rolling past on the wood floor.
So I did the obvious things, like send Monkey off to dust (and then go around behind him, later, and get the spots he missed), and put Chickadee to work on the bookshelves, and donned a haz-mat suit and tackled the bathrooms. (Otto was out in the garage cleaning up our old kitchen table to ready it for sale, and HOOBOY did he get the raw end of that deal, because apparently one of the children spilled a cup of milk down into the self-storing table leaf SEVERAL YEARS AGO. Urgh.)
After much of the basic, surface stuff was done, we found ourselves really getting into the deeper stuff. read more…
Love draws closer
What I told Otto—and what I thought was the truth—was that if we replaced the kitchen table, then I could tolerate everything ELSE I want to change about the kitchen, a while longer. The truth is that the kitchen is probably the only room left that’s still in its original-to-the-house state. I suppose it’s possible that the (ugly) wallpaper isn’t original, or that the (cracking) vinyl was replaced once along the way, but the cabinets and countertops and quite possibly the stove are ooooooold.
Not that there’s anything wrong with old. But in my mind’s eye, I see fresh paint, new cabinets, a stainless steel countertop, new appliances, and a floor I won’t mind mopping because MOPPING WILL ACTUALLY IMPROVE ITS APPEARANCE.
Someday, we’ll redo the kitchen, and it will make me deliriously happy. But probably not until the kids are grown and gone. In the meantime, I wanted a shiny dinette. read more…