Monday Musings

Hello there! Long time no talk… my lack of attention to this blog can be blamed on three things: being sick, school starting again and writers’ block. School is still going and I still feel a bit ill but I am feeling more inspired so there’s something. Without any more ado, here’s a random list of stuff I’ve been dying to tell you!!

• Liam said to me over the weekend, as a means of explaining why he couldn’t concentrate on his homework earlier in the day, “I just felt like I was having a heart attack.” Sounds just awful.
• We watched “Admission” on Saturday night… it was good, though ended up being much more heart warming and less comedic at the end than I thought it might be. Still, Tina Fey and Paul Rudd are spot on in their delivery and timing (despite their total lack of chemistry and her lack of lips which makes their onscreen kissing a wee bit awkward).
• As mentioned, I have a cold… it’s holding on and making me sleepy except for at night when I lay awake, wishing for sleep.
• I have renewed my love of reading books in the past month and have read seven in the last 4 weeks.
• I can only fill my brain with so much so since I’ve been reading, I haven’t been watching much TV or reading blogs, I wish I could find a way to do all those things… like picture-in-picture for media consumption that I could actually comprehend. I need a brain of the future.
• Also related to the above, I’m throwing around the idea of starting a laid back book club… I’ll put out a list of the books, we’ll meet monthly and anyone who wants to can come that month to discuss. I’ll host it on the same day (like the first Thursday of every month) and people can bring an appetizer, dessert or bottle of wine (because we all know that one of the perks of book clubs is the food and drinks). Would you come?
• I have been eating a glorified antipasto plate for dinner many nights lately… dip with lowfat sour cream, garlic olives, kalamata olives, turkey pepperoni bites, baby carrots, grape tomatoes and pretzels. It makes me so very happy. Who says antipasto needs to just be an appetizer? Sandy thinks I should market this as a grown up lunchable… so in case anyone steals the idea… you read it here first! Or at least give me a cut of your profits. Thanks.
• Liam’s loving his new school and the bus so that’s a relief! But sadly, the after-school meltdown and rage-a-thon that comes after holding his sh!t together all day has not been pleasant.
• We’ve been hosting a lot of friends and group things at our house in the last month which caused Jack to wonder why all the people are coming to our house now… that’s the joy of having a new (and significantly bigger) house and a mom who LOVES hosting things… you have people over. I thought it was cute that he noticed.
• Jack is now reading 3-digit numbers correctly. I find this impressive and disconcerting, because I feel like he will surpass my homework helping skills at a rather young age. I mean, I am relatively smart, but I don’t think I was correctly reading 176 when I was 4.5 years old. Now if we could just get him to stay in his own bed every night, he could become the favored child. I also find it hopeful because perhaps we won’t have the same homework struggles we have with Liam, who, while smart, cannot sit still or pay attention long enough to want to complete a homework sheet. Thankfully his teacher recognizes his smarts and is willing to work with him to figure strategies for success. I was explaining something to Liam last night and then asked him a question directly related to what I had just said and he paused, serious thinking look on his face and Jack, complete with exasperated voice, responded with the correct answer. Little brother came to play.
• Last night I had a very strange dream that our house was multiple stories and on a river and I was outside when I saw a very large bear (couldn’t tell you if it was black or brown and this really bothered me in my dream) moving by and I quickly went around to the front of the house where I was roadblocked by a cougar. The cougar started to come after me so I threw my cell phone over its head and it turned to check it out – luckily thinking it was a piece of food, even though I was cognizant of having no idea why I thought throwing my one means of communication at a cougar was a good idea. I ran inside and freaked the heck out. Then I woke up. I did not eat anything strange last night, or even close to bedtime so what in the world, brain, would you like to explain yourself?
• We’re going to see Over The Rhine this coming weekend… you know how I feel about live music so you know this just makes my week! It’s been too long since I was at a concert… perhaps fun.?
• I’m teaching Sunday school every other week… it started yesterday and it has been a long time since I did something like this (I taught Sunday school for a few years back in my near-post-college days) the best thing I can say about that today is that we survived. 18 4-year-old and young-fives… oh my. That’s a boatload of energy.
• Remember when we went to Australia and a tree fell down and took out our fence (and car – no big deal)… well, it looks like that fence is not so lucky. The new homeowner contacted me last week in search of a picture of the backyard because a drunk driver took out the fence and bushes in the old yard. [Stinks for them, but makes me feel a whole lot better because we had driven by the house and seen the missing fence and lilac bushes and I was disproportionately upset to think the new people took them out.]