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!

Surrender

I've officially given up. Nothing else is going to get done before Christmas. Nothing. Tomorrow we have to make our gingerbread houses (nothing difficult, we "glue" graham crackers to little orange juice cartons and then cover them with candy), so that will take up most of the day. Tomorrow night I will stay up late and rearrange the den. That's it. I had planned a lot more, but when you have to keep lying down and taking naps, things just don't go as planned.

Next year, though....that's different.

Someday I may be over this bronchitis. Someday I may be able get through the night without being jerked out of a sound sleep by a silly coughing fit. Someday I may be able to do three things in a row without lying down in between. But not now.

We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas tonight. I am happy to report that Charlie Brown remains a neurotic loser, Lucy is still a bossy know-it-all, and Snoopy's antics can yet make little kids laugh. It's nice to know that in this unpredictable world of terrorist attacks and melting icebergs, some things can be counted on to remain the same.

Larry's sealing our kitchen-floor grout as I type. And drinking beer. As long as he doesn't spill it on the grout, I don't care. It's not very exciting to watch, though, so I think I'll go to bed.

Singular Accomplishments

Today, while my wonderful next-door neighbor let my 3 youngest kids play in her house, I managed to wipe down the fronts of the kitchen cabinets, one section of the kitchen floor, half the stovetop, and the outside of the kitchen garbage can. Go me! Then I ran up the staircase and danced around with my hands in the air, with the theme of Rocky playing in my head.

Frightening, isn't it?

You know, after 16 years of raising little kids, everything smells like pee. I think my olfactory sense has been permanently damaged. Or it could be that I missed cleaning up after one of Sarah's many accidents. She claims she's scared of the potty. Do you think she'd go for a litter box? I could even teach her to scoop it herself.

Larry and I did our bit to contribute to global warming by leaving the oven on all night. So, if scientists find another hole in the ozone this week, you can blame us. We're responsible for the overpopulation problem too, though I guess you knew that already.

Wait - are those 2 separate issues - the global warming and the ozone thing? Wasn't the ozone problem caused by aerosol cans? Or is it back? I can't keep my environmental catastrophes straight anymore. No wonder I didn't win the Nobel prize last week. Although if they had a prize for Seat-of-the-Pants Parenting, I would definitely be a contender.

I'm just making this up as I go along; feel free to stop me at any time.

The boys' room finally smells normal (I mean, for a boys' bedroom); and I discovered that the disgusting smell in my kitchen (which was bothering me so much I couldn't even write about it) was caused by the rotting bag of potatoes in the cabinet under the sink. I was wondering why no one was dropping by anymore....

I just noticed that my calendar is still on September. I'm living in the past. I've got to go catch up. Talk to you later...