Things that go bump in the evening
Halloween truism the first: If you set out a bowl of mixed candy, with the Heath bars all on the bottom and well-hidden under the lollipops, you will still come home to a bowl devoid of Heath bars, even if there are lollipops left.
Halloween truism the second: The more elaborate and clever the costume, the more the wearer will want to remove it RIGHT NOW.
Halloween truism the third: Someone always ends up sick.
Happy freaking Halloween. read more…
Things they don’t teach in Driver Ed
Most of the mundane chores of life are fairly self-perpetuating. If I don’t do laundry, we don’t have clean clothes to wear. If I don’t cook, there’s nothing to eat. If I don’t occasionally throw the kids into the shower, one assumes that CPS would eventually show up on my doorstep. Things like that.
If I don’t change the oil in my car, well, the car continues to run. And perhaps Otto lectures me about how my driving habits mean I really need to be vigilant about changing the oil regularly, and then I change the subject. (Or maybe I say “Well, clearly YOU will be in charge of car maintenance, and I will be in charge of [redacted]! That’ll be fair!” And then Otto will point out that it’s too bad I can’t blog that because it was funny, and I will offer to blog it in a fashion that leaves the readers to imagine something much worse than what I actually said, because that’s always fun.) read more…
He makes the time go zoom
I was thinking that I may need a new category name here, soon. I mean, now that I am actually spending more time with Otto than with the television. People, I have shows on the DVR that I haven’t even bothered to glance at. Either I am in love or I am dying. Personally, I’m hoping for the former.
Oh, there are things to tell about the weekend, but I am too tired to tell it all tonight. Tonight you’ll get little more from me than “Weekend good. Like Otto. Have fun. Need more sleep.”
Of course that won’t stop me from saying exactly that in the most verbose way possible, anyway. I am nothing if not predictable. read more…
More information, less knowledge
So, I would’ve gotten here sooner, but I was sort of busy yelling very loudly. Also, rending my clothing and cursing the name of anyone I’ve ever known. Lucky Otto! He picked such a good time to visit!
There were just a few sucktastic days in there for various reasons. Many of those reasons are only interesting to me, I’m sure, (a bleach spot on my favorite purple shirt! WHY, GOD, WHY?) but those of you who aren’t busy skipping everything I’ve ever said about my children’s health and then telling me that I am just randomly “doing things” to my children and I need to stop (why? why am I doing that? for the sheer joy it brings me to not be able to cook like a normal person?) might want to hear about Monkey’s recent appointment with the allergist, I thought. read more…
Love has wicked cold toes
Love is having a really frustrating, rotten, horrible, aggravating day yesterday and then losing my sitter and running around frantic to find someone who can come stay with the kids so that I can get to the airport, and then getting to the airport, finally, and mostly forgetting all about the stupidness that came earlier in the day.
Love is sitting here working, and being able to glance over at this and feeling that right now, all is right with the world.
Happy Love Thursday, everyone.
Let’s pretend it’s a food blog
So, artichokes were on sale at the supermarket this week. And I haven’t had an artichoke in FOREVER. Three came home with me, nestled in-between my standard grocery fare of apples and pears and chicken breast and milk.
Artichokes are good for all sorts of things, you know. Especially if you have kids. They don’t really LOOK edible so much as they look like little round pissed-off armadillos.
And then there’s the inevitable conversation:
“What do they taste like?”
“They taste like artichokes.”
I tried to come up with something to compare it to, and failed. It tastes like an artichoke. read more…
Most of my plants are dead, too
I’m smack-dab in the middle of a Busy Time with work, which is a good thing, and also it’s PTA newsletter time again, so my life is completely fascinating right now, full of highly bloggable material like “today I sat at my computer and wrote stuff for eight hours, stopping only to tell the poor telemarketer from that company that rhymes with Horizon that if they called me one more time I was going to cancel my cellular service.”
But that’s why you read me. Because my life is so much more thrilling than yours.
Anyway, after a long day, the kids came home and I stopped working long enough to tend to them and make a lovely dinner. And they totally appreciated it and thanked me. In my imagination. read more…
More chances to be scarred for life
So despite my heartfelt desire to spend a day curled up in the corner so as to best recover from yesterday, the minutiae of life demanded my attention. We had places to go, people to see, and things to do.
None of it, however, was particularly newsworthy; unless you want to count the letter I finally wrote in reference to this matter. Now we wait and see if they back down and admit they’ve been bilking unsuspecting parents for years, or if I go to jail. Yay!
But I did learn something important this evening. When it’s just a few days until an anticipated reunion with your sweetheart—after you’ve been apart for close to two months—it is NOT a good idea to ask him for ideas on what to blog about. The resultant conversation will continue merrily until you remind him that his family reads your blog. Then he will insist that that’s not a problem, and you’ll have to remind him that YOUR family reads your blog. And then there will be a very long, awkward pause.
And then you will be tempted. OH SO VERY TEMPTED. But you won’t do it, because you are rather fond of your father and don’t want him to have another heart attack. Hi Dad! We were talking about looking forward to… apple picking.
I… wish I had a bottlecap right now.
It came from under the sink
The massive cleaning out of the crap continues apace. There’s no shortage of junk around here, that’s for sure. I have this crazy dream that someday I’ll look around my house and only see stuff that we NEED and USE. Is that crazy, or what?
Today we had soccer (where Monkey’s team triumphantly TIED for the second week in a row! they are really not-quite-sucking, now!) and came home and had hot cocoa (because it was 40 degrees on the soccer field) and I decided to do some baking. Mmmmm, delicious gluten-free pumpkin bread! It really is delicious, but now I understand that “gluten” means “having glue-like properties,” because everything I bake with, say, rice flour (yummier than it sounds), tastes fine but falls apart. So we baked pumpkin crumble. Grab a spoon.
Then, because the day hadn’t been quite exciting enough, I decided to clean out my bathroom. (Warning: The following ends up having surprisingly little to do with cleaning. Go figure.) read more…
Maddog Mama
It’s not often that I find my spam mail to be prophetic, but hey—stranger things have certainly happened.
This morning amidst the advertisements for mortgages, diet pills, bodily enhancements, and RILLY RILLY REAL ROLEXES, GINA!, I received this gem of a subject line:
Oh, you are not able to control your feelings!
I think we all know what the email was really about (ummm… donuts?), but after today it made me laugh. read more…