Category Archives: Random

• MOPs starts up again today! Whoot! It’s my last year (not whoot!) after seven years in this group… I’ll be sad to move on but I’m going to soak up every last minute of it this year.
• My kids excel at the art of making up excuses to get out of bed… the other night Jack same out and indignantly complained, “Liam said, ‘Shame on me'” I didn’t know any other way to respond to that other than to tell him to go back to bed. I mean, really…
• Jack’s also excelling at crawling into bed with us between the hours of 4 and 7 a.m., firstly to check if it is “wake up time yet?” and then to “cuddle.” He’s now added a new thing where he likes to hold my hand (or really, just a couple of my fingers), which would be super sweet if the kid ever stopped moving. I can usually fall back asleep with him in bed, but I cannot when he’s holding my hand and moving constantly. Sigh. I know this age won’t last forever, but it does seem to be taking its sweet time.
• I’m looking forward to checking out ArtPrize this weekend – even my parents are coming over for the day on Sunday to check it out. It’s fun living in a city that has cool things without being so big that it seems daunting to check them out.
• Recent conversation between my kids:
  Jack: Why do you like George better than me?
  Liam: Because he’s just so cute!
  Jack: I wish I was a dog.
• Also looking forward to my first ever Apple Cider Slushy – perhaps today after Liam gets home from school.
• I was thinking about my strange dream from Sunday night/Monday morning and realizing that many of my bad dreams involve an animal trying to get me… like the strange dream with the unusually gross snake/lizard hybrid… past dreams have included lions and gorillas. Alternately, they include something else that is strange chasing me like men with jack-o-lanterns for heads or Thriller-esque zombies. What are your bad dreams about?
• I have also had dreams where Simon has done something to upset me and I wake up mad at him… he hates it when that happens because he didn’t actually do the thing I’m so mad at him for. Understandable, but I just can’t help it.
• Liam takes after his father a bit much… Simon cannot ever be late for things, which is admirable, except it means he is almost always EARLY instead. Liam does this when going down to wait for the bus in the morning… the second the 5/6 bus leaves, he is out the front door, ready for his bus to come. Nevermind that it is sometimes 5-10 minutes later. Their philosophy is better to be early than late (which is true) but I find I prefer to be efficient and simply be right on time. We agree to disagree.
• George is having surgery on Friday to remove a bladder stone and have his teeth cleaned… here’s hoping both procedures go well. He gets to spend the night on Friday night at the vet’s office… whatever will I do without the furball sitting on my shoulder while I watch TV and barking randomly at noises I can’t hear?
• I did tell Simon that if something happens to George, I was getting the two dogs that my cousin posted who are in need of a new family. He must be confident that George will be okay because he agreed to my “proposal.”
• My college friend, Pauline, has a 10-year-old… how does this happen because despite having a 4.5-year-old and a 7-year-old, I still feel like someone else should be signing my permission slips for me.
• Despite not feeling old, I think my Google search history would disagree, some things I’ve recently searched for: deer repellant plants, plants for sandy soil, cholesterol results, moles on scalp and sleep apnea.
• Does anyone else do Internet research on new people they meet, like perhaps new neighbors or other parents from their kid’s school? Yeah, me neither.
• After nearly two weeks of feeling sick to some degree, I feel… well, still a little bit sick. Riveting disclosure, I know.
• Jack was wearing a hood Monday morning on his way to daycare and when he took it off, his hair was standing up a bit in places and he matter-of-factly said, “I guess Miss Michelle didn’t do a very good job this time with my haircut.” I don’t know why, but his delivery and what he said just cracked me up, which of course made him furious with me.
• Still love our new house and will continue to call it our new house for at least another 4 months, perhaps longer.

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.]