Name That Post ('Cause I Can't)

Today Rachel turned 6 and, to celebrate, she had her first real birthday party. A real party, meaning people other than family were invited. I ran around the house all morning, cleaning up and ordering the kids to do the same. My bedroom looks like a storage closet because I grabbed all the clutter on the main floor and shoved it up there before the festivities commenced.

It ain't pretty, but it works. Heloise, I'm not.

While Rachel was opening her presents, I commented to my neighbor that it was such a funny coincidence that everyone gave Rachel Hello Kitty stuff and here we had Hello Kitty napkins, plates, etc., for the party. Whereupon my neighbor pointed out that the Hello Kitty invitations that we sent out last week may have just possibly tipped everyone off.

Oh, yeah...I forgot about that.

Anna decorated the cake (and I am so very grateful) and helped Rachel stuff the loot bags. She also hid the loot bags for for the treasure hunt. And she painted Rachel's nails with the Hello Kitty nail polish she bought Rachel for her birthday. For a while there, it felt just like the good old days living with the not-adolescent Anna; that is, until I had the temerity to ask her a simple question, and she looked at me as if I had just passed gas in her face. Oh, well...

I have a dental appointment tomorrow morning. This would be the appointment that is replacing the one I totally blew off a couple of weeks ago. So now I am worried that the dentist may still be angry. And he has all those sharp, pointy instruments lined up, waiting for me...

So I would like to go to bed early this evening, but I know better. I tried to do that last night, but I swear that Larry waits until I get up there to start snoring. Actually, he waits until I have just fallen asleep to start snoring.

So I hit him.

And then he has the nerve to act like he doesn't even know what's going on. Let me tell you, I don't believe him for a minute. This is just his passive-aggressive way of getting back at me for making him get rid of his ugly chair last December.

Marriage can be complicated like that.

Announcing...

I'm starting my very own blogging book club. It will be simple, really. I'll read a book, then I will comment on it and give it away. The person who gets it must promise to do the same. (I have no idea how I will enforce that, of course.) I need some incentive to read something decent, because - really - my brain is rotting away from the inside out. I can feel it. I mean, if I see a blog post with paragraphs more than 5 sentences long and/or no pictures, I skip it 'cause it looks too hard. That is a very bad sign, indeed.

Hence, the fun of a giveaway. Granted, I still haven't mailed the first book I gave away; but I promise I will develop a better system. Maybe.

And if I were Marie of Memarie Lane, I would know how to make some sort of cute button advertising this club. Of course, if I were Marie, I would also know how to make my blog look not like a Creamsicle. Dream on...

So! I would like to start this giveaway with The Devil in the Details (Jennifer Traig); but I can't, because my best friend (hello?! are you reading this?) still has it. Until she decides to pretend that she is still literate and finish reading it, I will have to focus on other books I have read (because I've read about 3 other books since that one, not that my friend is slow or anything...).

Instead, I give you Cynthia Kaplan's Why I'm Like This. Her self-deprecating, somewhat neurotic style is a refreshing contrast to what one would assume to be the self-aggrandizing personality of a New York actress/writer. Cynthia never fails to surprise the reader with a fresh take on typical life situations, leaving him/her with a new appreciation for the mundane.

How did that sound? I've been reading a lot of Amazon book reviews, and I think I'm channeling them. Because, truth to tell, no matter how much I like a book, I always end up at a loss for words when I try to explain it to other people. I say things like, "Well, um, it's about this woman who is also an actress, but she's not really like that, she's sort of a regular person, too."

Or, "It's about this person who grew up sort of Jewish in Connecticut and who lives in NYC, but it's really funny."

Or, "I really liked this book because....hmm...I guess I identified with the author, even though we have absolutely nothing in common."

Anyway, if you are just dying to read this book (and then pass it on!) after those scintillating descriptions, please leave a comment saying that you are interested. Thanks! (I must say, this idea sounded very exciting when I first thought of it; I guess I don't get out much.)

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In other news, I have won the much-coveted (by me) Imperfect Parent Blogger award. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the prize is, other than that it is - in the words of the people running the contest - "unique." Frankly, I don't want unique; I want an Amazon gift card. So there may be another giveaway in the offing here. I'll keep you posted.

Poor Susie keeps jerking awake, saying that her ears hurt. We've already pinned her down and forced Motrin into her, but it doesn't seem to have made any difference (aside from traumatizing me). This situation does not bode well for the rest of our weekend.

The illness seems to have come on rather suddenly, as just today Susie (along with Rachel) was a happy attendee at a birthday party which featured The Reptile Lady. I know that sounds like someone who belongs in a circus sideshow (Step right up! See the Bearded Dragon Lady!), but in actuality it was a very personable young woman who arrived at the birthday girl's house with various ugly creatures in tow. These included a bearded dragon, 3 snakes (including a boa constrictor), and a tortoise. I, for one, was completely grossed out (well, except by the lizard - he was sort of cute). Oh, and Rachel is now the proud owner of a stuffed iguana, awarded for her prowess at Pin the Tail on the Donkey. I hope she didn't cheat. I also hope she doesn't cut its head off.

I chose to hang out at the party with the girls, because the alternative was to stay at home and watch Larry tug huge pieces of flagstone all over our backyard in the 90-plus degree heat. In fact, before the party, I was so desperate to get away that I took the kids on a walk to get a free smoothie at a Grand Opening about a mile from us. I figured we'd be the only people in our rather affluent town to be cheap enough to care about a free 12-ounce drink. Apparently, however, the economic downturn is taking its toll; we arrived to find we were 101st in the line waiting for the store to open. I know we were just past 100, because they ran out of free T-shirts just before we got to the door.

They were good smoothies, though.

Well, that's all the news fit to blog for today (and then some); pop on over to MidCenturyModernMoms if you care to find out what the cardinal rule for raising teenagers might be. Or don't. Whatever. I think I've bothered people enough this week.

Here We Go 'Round The Mulberry Bush...

Dawn posted about her husband and kids finding mulberries on the trees near their campsite, which reminded me of my own mulberry story (don't you have one, too?). It's a story of birthdays, and self-sufficiency, and disillusionment, all rolled into one.

You see, mulberries are ripe here at the same time as David's birthday; so, many years ago, when he was a baby, Theo and Anna and I picked some and saved them for a couple of days so we could use them to color the frosting for David's cake. I was crowing with pride over my resourcefulness as we mashed the hand-picked wild berries (free! not artificial! Just like the pioneers!) into our all-natural confectioner's-sugar frosting - yes, I was practically overcome with the ingenuity of it all, until I noticed several minuscule worms (worms!) (teeny-tiny worms!) crawling in the bowl.

This discovery would not have been quite so traumatic had I not had a spoonful of said frosting in my mouth at the time.

Alas! This occurred in the dark ages before blogging and before digital cameras, or I most certainly would have gotten a picture of that frosting, in all its freshly-hatched larval glory. After I had stopped gagging and spitting and generally retching into the kitchen sink, that is....which scene was probably photo-worthy itself.

So, have a great Fourth, y'all! Just make sure to look at your food before you eat it, okay?

It's My Party...I'll Blog If I Want To

I know. You've missed me (I hope). But I had to start celebrating my birthday yesterday, one day early. Because today will be filled with preparations for Larry and Anna going away for the week to work camp, and I refuse to be shorted. So...

We went blueberry picking yesterday! I harangued Larry into taking a day off work (because today's my birthday), and then I decided we should all go blueberry picking and he had to agree (because...well...today's my birthday); and a mere 50 dollars later, we walked out of there with 12 and a half pounds of the yummy fruit (plus what we had managed to stash in our bellies, which was quite a lot).

The excursion would have been blessedly uneventful, but (and you knew there was a but, didn't you?) Susie decided to poop. So she did. Which was sort of smelly, but we figured that it was the compost or whatever that the blueberry growers use to make their plants grow; so we ignored it, until Susie informed us that she was a walking manure pile. (A cute one, though, I must say.) Larry and I bickered over who should change her (did I mention that today is my birthday? Oh, I did? Well, then...). You would think that, after 6 kids, we wouldn't bicker over things like that anymore; but old habits die hard. He felt the incident was my fault, because I had said we didn't need a diaper on her, so I should be the one to clean her up (even though it is my birthday today)(but, I've mentioned that). So I pouted. He ignored me, for a while. But I won.

Larry won the other argument though. We could hear bird calls everywhere as we picked, and at one point Larry said, "Listen to that one! It sounded just like something electronic." Which made me launch into my "No, electronic rings and trills are modeled after bird calls, not the other way 'round. That's the problem these days - we're so disconnected from nature that we forget where all these sounds originally came from, even when we experience them directly, blah, blah, blah" speech, all the way down the row and into the next row, where we discovered a box hooked up to some speakers, with the words "BirdGard" emblazoned on it.

Come to think of it, we hadn't seen a single bird the whole time. Apparently, the electronic hawk calls being broadcast keep the birds from eating the berries. So...I had to eat crow on that one. (Ha, ha, ha - I couldn't help it!)

It's my birthday, I can pun if I want to...

When we got home from our farm labors, I went straight upstairs and took a 2-hour nap. It was heavenly. I swear, there is nothing I like better than a mid-afternoon siesta. I think I've been programmed to expect a midday break from the daily craziness by 16 years of napping babies. Ever since Susie gave up her nap, I've been pining for my quiet time.

I made blueberry buckle when I got up. It was delicious. We put 3 candles in it and called it a birthday cake. There were more candles, but the girls got a little overeager and stuck them in the cake before it cooled down sufficiently. They melted. Yum.


Anna gave me my birthday present early by having a nice little tantrum yesterday evening; we let her go have a bunch of fun all day, and she was angry that that experience wouldn't be repeated today. We had the nerve to suggest that it was, in fact, our desire for her to have fun at work camp all next week that necessitated her staying home today to help us prepare for her and her father's absence. (Larry was dragooned into being a driver and work crew supervisor for the week.) In Anna's words, "Him? I don't even want him to go!"

Be involved, the experts say. Show the kids you care. I am starting to think that the "experts" never actually had any teenagers of their own.

Theo's present to me was taking it like a man (truly) when we decided that he couldn't go to work camp after all because he would miss too much of his Arabic class. His reaction was impressive - no histrionics, no door slamming, just a resigned acceptance of losing the only fun thing we had planned for him all summer. Heck, I was more upset than he was. I cried. (In my defense, it was an emotional time of the month for me.) (And...it was practically my birthday...)

The little kids cried, too - they had been anticipating a dairyfest of epic proportions for the week he was to be away (Theo's dairy allergy is severe enough to preclude our cooking any cheese in the house while he is in residence). They had planned homemade pizza, quesadillas, whipped cream, and baked ziti. Given that I probably would have gained 10 pounds over the week from this menu, I'm sort of glad those plans fell through.

Well! Time's a-wastin', and I need to take advantage of any free moment I can get today. I think I'll go to the bookstore and just sit there. Quietly. You see, if I stay home, I have to keep reminding people that it's my birthday; because they expect me to do the things that I have to do on ordinary days. Maybe I should just give them a list:

Things I Don't Do On My Birthday

1. Settle fights
2. Serve meals
3. Button buttons
4. Kill centipedes (all right, I never do that)
5. Listen to tantrums
6. Share the bathroom
7. Eat sensibly
8. Get off the computer before I darn well want to

I leave you with this, as a little present, though I don't feel like crying. Still, it's a birthday song. Again, look at those back-up singers. Look at how clothed everyone is. I think Anna fears that that is how I want her to dress.

No One Home

I'm not here today. Nope. Spending waaaay too much time on the computer lately, and today happens to be David's 11th birthday. I should pay some attention to him, and bake a cake, and maybe even wrap those presents, right? So go on over to MadMad's blog and read about her underwear. It turns out that she and I wear the exact same kind. Is that amazing, or what? No wonder we are bloggy friends.

I'll try to save you some cake...

Of Books and Birthdays and BBQ's

Neva4getme has won my first (and maybe last) ever giveaway! Please contact me with your address so that my friend/secret agent can mail you Jen Singer's book You're a Good Mom from a location that is not here. The winner is due with her second baby any minute, so this can double as a new baby gift. Yes, I am cheap.

Things have finally quieted down here at the old blogstead, now that all the people Dawn and Sue sent over have finished checking me out (and, um, didn't come back). I'll admit it - it was exciting to feel so popular for a couple of days. Sort of like when the cool girls in high school let you sit at their lunch table for a bit, you know? For a few glorious days, you felt as if you were cool and beautiful and interesting to talk to... I mean, so what if they pretended you didn't exist the week after that?

Or was that just me that that sort of thing happened to?

Never mind. If you look at the sidebar to the left there, you'll see that yet another number has turned over. Yes, Susie is now 3 years old. I don't know how I am going to manage without a 2-year-old in the house. I mean, I'll no longer have an excuse for my sloppy housekeeping and half-hearted attempts at meal preparation. I might even be expected to keep up on laundry. The pressure! The pressure!

I got creative with Susie's birthday cake and added some mashed strawberries to the batter in lieu of some of the liquid. My friends, do not try this at home. I thought the strawberries would turn the cake pink; but instead it came out sort of brown, as if I had used whole wheat flour. The kids, of course, wolfed it down anyway, as it was covered in totally-bad-for-you lard-and-sugar frosting; but it wasn't one of my finest culinary moments.

We then made the kids walk a mile to David's Boy Scout troop's BBQ. They were having a pig roast. Rachel was rather disturbingly fascinated by the fact that she could see the pig's head. I expect to see our neighbors' pet rabbits lying on our grill doused in barbecue sauce any day now.

Larry and I figured out that we saved approximately 40 cents on gasoline by making the kids walk to the BBQ and back. Add to that the 40 cents I saved on Thursday by walking with the kids to their dental appointments, and...well...we've got 80 cents to put in the fund for the new shoes the kids are going to need if we keep making them walk everywhere.

Take that, global warming!

Volcano Virgin

That title came from somewhere - an old Doonesbury joke, I think...

For weeks, Brian has been planning his birthday celebration. He had drawn up extremely elaborate plans of how I was to decorate his sheet cake - the final design included a volcano spewing lava and ash into the air, people running away in terror, etc. All of which was way beyond my skill level. (Actually, anything more difficult to draw than a smiley face is beyond my skill level.) So then, naturally, I was beating myself up over how I don't make super creative cakes for my kids' b'days - you know, the way Dawn (Because I Said So) does. Because she has 6 kids, too, you know; but you don't see her telling them, "Hey, I let you pick out the frosting color - what more do you want?" Nope - she makes cakes shaped like cars and...and...other stuff like that. Which just points out to me my complete inadequacy as a mother. (You hear that, Dawn? Stop torturing me.)

Anyway, necessity is the mother of invention and all that; so, even as I despaired of ever being the fun sort of mother who makes Wow! birthday cakes, I suddenly remembered the Barbie Doll cake (check it out), where one uses a 2-qt measure to bake the batter in so that it comes out skirt-shaped. Which, I realized in a flash of brilliance (or maybe it was a flash of desperation), is also volcano-shaped. And thus great ideas are born...only, it didn't work quite as I envisioned.


Not very volcanic-looking, is it?

Not only did it look pathetic, but it was so dense and chewy as to be almost inedible. Hmmm....so I made a regular sheet cake (that we could actually eat) and plopped my poor excuse for a volcano on top. And, whaddaya know? It still looked pathetic.



But Brian and David, bless their imaginative little-boy hearts, decorated it with frosting and lava-like frozen strawberries and little Monopoly houses and hotels, and they thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Really. It seems that my kids refuse to accept the fact that I am most emphatically not up to the job of giving them a fun childhood. They like me, in fact (well, the non-teens do, anyway). And how great is that?

Smokey and Me - BFF

Nothing exciting, today. Well, unless you call my teen daughter screaming, "Mommy! Fire!" from the kitchen exciting. I ran in there (without my camera, darn) to find flames leaping up from the burner all around my 12-qt pot. Even though I am a veteran of many oven and stove fires, this particular display of pyrotechnics was quite impressive. Luckily, it died down when I turned the burner off; and I coated the remaining embers with a generous sprinkling of baking soda to make sure nothing relit.

So there it sits. For some reason, it didn't occur to me to actually clean the mess up. I mean, I just cleaned the stove, remember? I have photographic proof.

I'm exhausted tonight (firefighting really takes it out of me); I hope I will be up to the task of creating a volcano cake for Brian's birthday tomorrow. I trust that a volcano cake is easier to make than a tornado costume was. And I have to wrap the Lego set that Larry picked up on his lunch hour today, once we show it to David to make sure it isn't another duplicate. Of course we will be having Brian's favorite dinner - Skillet Lasagna. Only, the boys call it Kill it! Lasagna as they stab at it with their forks. Which behavior irritates Anna to no end. She also hated it when the boys taught Rachel (back when she was 3) to sing, "Pig brains for dinner! Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum!" Little brothers are annoying that way.

But it was a catchy tune. Sometimes I still find myself humming it. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

I Feel Pretty

Do all parents feel alarmed when they hear water running anywhere in the house? Is it instinct? Or have I been traumatized by too many years of bad plumbing experiences?

Knit Night went well. I took a barely-knitting friend there, because she wanted someone to show her how to put fringe on a scarf. She couldn't figure out why everyone there was so friendly and helpful. At a loss for a better explanation, I told her, "It's because they're knitters." Really, can you picture a mean knitter? Tale of 2 Cities aside, of course.

By the way, "barely-knitting" means a beginner knitter, not one who likes to do her handiwork in the nude. In case you were wondering. Though I'm sure if I googled "nudist knitters," I'd probably find a yahoo group or two devoted to just that. Isn't the Internet great? [I was going to hyperlink to a site, just to show you that I was right; but, after perusing the options, I've changed my mind. This is a family blog, dammit.]

I was in Target today (surprise), trying to find some birthday gifts for my eldest, who turns 16 tomorrow. We are planning to buy him a really nice bicycle (as opposed to a really nice car, say); but, since a birthday isn't fun without a bunch of little packages to unwrap, I wanted to get him a few other things. Unfortunately, even though I have lived with this kid since the second he was born, I couldn't think of anything to get him. Alarm clock? Naah. He'll think I'm nagging him to get up earlier. MP3 player? Too many to pick from. Cell phone? No way - I'm still trying to decide which company to go with. So, after much agonized deliberation, I selected an attractive bag of gummy bears to give to him on his big day. I sure hope that it really is the thought that counts.

"Rachel has 24 dollars," Brian announced today, as Rachel skipped ahead of us in the store, gaily swinging her little purse. "No, she doesn't, Brian," I corrected him. "She had 20 dollars from her birthday, but that's all gone." "I do have 24 dollars," Rachel said. "Brian counted it for me." So I took a look inside her purse and, lo and behold, there was a wad of money in there of various denominations. We don't know where she got it, because she's pretending she can't remember. In fact, I'm sure we'll never know. Does that really surprise anyone who has been following this blog for the past year? I think not. My precious 5-year-old daughter seems to have a predilection for being on the wrong side of the law, and there's not a darn thing I can do about it.

Finally, after procrastinating for months, I betook myself to the hairdresser (all of 5 minutes away) and told her to do something, anything, to make me look good. And she did. And I will continue to look this good until I have to wash my hair - because I can never, ever style it the right way myself. Still, 40 dollars for 48 hours of feeling pretty - that's less than a dollar an hour. Not a bad price for happiness, is it? The best things in life may not be free, but they can be fairly inexpensive.