The next generation of ‘fros
Apparently when I was a toddler, I took to ripping out my hair by the handsful. My mother recounts with sadness the story of taking me in to have my beautiful curls (what was left of them, anyway) cut off so that my hair would be too short to grab and yank.
In kindergarten I rode the bus with a group of older girls who tormented me every single day with the assertion that I was surely a boy, because no girl would have hair so short.
Thus began The Hair Wars between my mother and me. I had certain ideas about the way I wanted to wear my hair (long), and she had certain OTHER ideas about my hair (it should be short), and we are both, ah, well, perhaps just the teensiest bit willful. You can imagine how it went for the next twelve years or so. read more…
Tip of the turmoil
I thought I’d take the weekend to get a handle on the fifty thousand aspects of my life which are slowly spinning out of my grasp, and then by tonight I’d be feeling so much more in control of everything.
HAHAHAHA!
(Also, a blind man walks into a bar. He says, “Ouch!”)
Anyway, I stepped away from the computer for two whole days, and my life is still… well… whatever it is. So apparently I cannot blame any of my current issues on blogging. Which is too bad, because 1) that would be easy to fix and 2) it’s always entertaining to read someone blogging about blogging, or, alternatively, reading the phone book. read more…
Six degrees of help me, I can’t stop
Do you know Jen? She’s a lovely woman. Delightful. I enjoy her very much.
Or, rather, I DID. Not anymore. Because now I know that she’s a foul temptress bent on destroying civilization as we know it.
You see, Jen thought she’d be doing me a big favor by inviting me to join LinkedIn, and she raved to me about how great it is, so I went ahead and signed up. And she was right, she WAS doing me a big favor, in much the same way those guys who tell you that you should just try it because one little bit won’t hurt you are doing THEIR friends a big favor. read more…
Love says it all
I am not a Valentine’s Day person. I want to know that you love me, but not because Hallmark told you to say so. And while I do enjoy a lovely bunch of flowers, I like them best for no reason in particular.
So Otto and I had agreed not to do anything specifically for Valentine’s. I was happy to see him this past weekend, and sorry to see him leave on Saturday morning. But when I went up to bed on Satuday night and pulled back the covers, something went clunk. read more…
He’s already thinking like a parent
When Otto and I picked up Chinese food this weekend, they gave us three fortune cookies. We, of course, ate two of them. The third cookie has been sitting on my kitchen counter ever since.
I moved it to a more prominent location this morning while I was packing the kids’ lunches, reasoning that maybe I would see it when I WASN’T running around, busy, and do something with it. I’m not sure what I thought I was going to do. Eat it? Throw it away? Who knows. All I know is that I was tired of seeing it shoved back on the corner of the counter where I stack the diet coke cans waiting to be crushed and put into the recycling. read more…
Not very bright
God, I am so stupid sometimes I want to just grab a frying pan and hit myself in the face. It is only slightly comforting that none of my frying pans are cast iron, but Otto says I am not allowed to live in the south without a good cast iron pan, so I had best do all of my face-smacking now before I buy something I could really break my nose with.
Today I did two things with the very best of intentions, and I am already kicking myself. read more…
Custom pink puffy hearts
I tasked the children’s father with the annual Selecting Of The Valentines for the kids this year, in part because I hadn’t gotten around to it and he had them with him this weekend, and in part because the entire exercise makes me want to shove sharp pencils into my eyeballs.
When it’s up to me, we go to the Dollar Store and have a choice of maybe six different kinds of cards. When the children whine that they want something that isn’t there, I try to look sympathetic. Then I tell them to hurry up and pick because we have to go get groceries.
The REAL stores have entire WALLS of valentines cards, though, and because Daddy is much nicer than Mama, the kids got to pick just what they wanted. read more…
At least there was time for Chinese food
So in the excitement of finding out my son might not just be a gigantic pain in the butt after all, and all of your lovely comments (thank you so much, you lovely pretty people who are pulling for my kid), I didn’t even think to mention that Otto was here.
Was. Past tense. Because he was here for about a day and then he left. I think it was something I said.
It wasn’t anything I said, really. He was just passing through on his way to an adjacent state and managed to stop here long enough for me to give him a haircut and feed him some fried rice. Because he has priorities. read more…
My kind of disorder
It’s been kind of a long road since it became clear that Monkey was struggling, which those of you who’ve been reading along already know. Things at school kept getting worse, we’ve waded through the proper HMO channels and had him (mis)diagnosed as having ADD, we went back to the allergist, we increased therapy, and there continued to be no answers for us.
Until today. read more…
Love requires a steady hand
I’m fighting a cold right now, which is frustrating. I’ve barely been out of the house this week, so where did it come from? Maybe from the orthodontist’s office, where everything is coated with invisible platinum for your bankruptcy enjoyment. (Note to self: invisible platinum is apparently not antimicrobial.)
So I perhaps read a little faster, at bedtime, and tucked the kids in a little more briskly than usual. I did the most cursory clean-up of the kitchen that I could justify, then retreated to my bed with my laptop. I planned to finish up some work and go to sleep early.
About half an hour after tuck-in, Monkey stumbled into my room, squinty and sleepy. read more…