informal poll

   I have a question for those readers interested.  How do you handle it when you don't like your daughter's friend?  As I've often said, parenting is an education, on a lot of levels.  As usual, I'm learning all sorts of things I didn't expect.  Our girl likes to play  with one of the neighbor's kids.  Don't get me wrong, our girl is not being bullied or hurt. She is however being bothered, and so is mommy.  This kid will knock on our door, barge in, ask for candy, spill things, make a mess of toys, and leave.  She stays for hours and we never hear from her parents, who, by the way , have a nanny.
   My problem is, the kid is not mean per se, just maddening and I disagree/don't understand how she's being raised.  It's not the kid's fault and in parenting it's really hard to judge if you don't know the full story.  Nonetheless, I can't deal with the stress.  We have a small house and I've made it clear to our girl that she is responsible for any mess that she and her guests make.  I've also let a different mommy know that if our girl engages in similar behavior in her house, she had our permission to toss her out.  It was my hope that if the mommies ganged up on these shorter people the message would get through.  She had also observed similar behavior in the same girl.  I am at a loss for how to handle this.  I've always stank at politics.  The only solution I've come up with so far is to limit the visits to a maximum of two hours, preferably either outside or at the other girl's house.
  I think even our daughter has figured this out.  I don't want her to be mean to this kid and I don't want to upset her parents but I could use a break.  If I'm being a bit nuts, it wouldn't be the first time but I'd also like to know.  Your turn....

  Am I the only one who can't believe it's September already??!! Our girl has been back to school a whopping two days and already the homework hissy fit has started.  This was not because the teacher loaded her up, no, her majesty didn't want to sit down and fill out one measly page of numbers!  Why is it that what appears to be a small request or task gets me all the drama of a nordic opera?
  When we ask her to brush her teeth, you'd think I was asking her to rip out her eyeballs!  I have also stopped trying to explain why she has to take care of her teeth.  Talking when no one is listening just makes me feel like a bee trying to fly through a closed window.  Am I the only one going through this?  God help me, I hope not.  Does anyone know Meryl Streep's parents??
   Do you, dear reader, remember an office supply commercial years ago that played the song "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" around the back to school season?  I certainly do.  I must remind myself that I am among a privileged few. I am a stay at home mom.  I didn't plan it this way, as those close to us know but I can acknowledge that I am indeed luckier than a great many who can't afford to spend their days at home raising their child.  I guess it's a function of my age as a parent, as well as my sarcastic temperament.  I gave birth at 40.  When my spouse and I were younger, we had a lot more energy, but no money.  We now have money but not enough energy to handle a bouncy six year old as well as the next parents over.
   There is an old saying that familiarity breeds contempt.  I'm getting the distinct impression that after being home since mid June, we were getting sick of each other.  Granted, we didn't just sit home and stare at the four walls.  There was camp three days a week for most of the summer.  The last two weeks of August we had nothing planned and no camp.  Since I'm such a huge chicken I decided to try to come up with a list of ten or twelve possible things we could do. This included going to the library, mini golf, a movie, visiting Daddy at work for lunch etc.  I think we managed three or four out of twelve.  Clearly, our girl had other ideas.  Some of which involved trying to visit neighborhood friends at 5pm!  This kid has no sense of timing.  Isn't the universal 'you-people-need-to-leave-wilma's-making-dinner' time 5:30pm?
   After a couple of years of cleaning up after mine and other people's kids, mommy is slowly starting to smarten up.  My girl is responsible for any mess she and her guests make.  They are to clean up together, otherwise, she can play at another house.  I've also let another mom know she is welcome to toss my kid out under the same circumstances.  I'm hoping if we gang up on them, we may actually get somewhere.  A mommy can dream.  I'm also learning that playdates are not seven hour affairs! Mercifully, the first time for that was the last.  There's hope for me yet.
  There was also a painful amount of Ipad time.  Ding dong that is now dead!  The Ipad is verboten until the homework is done.  Two nights a week there will also be soccer.  We have also implemented the return of the school year bedtime schedule.  Management Unfair! This is an outrage! You'll be hearing from my lawyer!
  There are parts of summer I will miss.  Mostly they involve visiting Mom Mom at her house to swim in their community pool.  Our girl loves to swim and carting her around for two sets of swim lessons was worth it to see how much she improved over last year. I'm also aware that time with Mom Mom is not an inexhaustable well.  Lunches at Chik-Fil-A weren't bad and there was also a good playground outing with two other moms that was nice.
   I'm also looking forward to regaining my capacity to enjoy our girl.  She has the best giggle and is amazingly smart.  The last two weeks turned me into a worse crab than usual.  I was becoming an overcritical pain in the ass.  Going back to school is just as good for her I think, as me.  Then again, perhaps mommy just needs to get a freakin' job??
  I  

  I was waiting recently in a radiologists office to get a mammogram.  Frequently I bring puzzles from the paper to work on while I'm waiting.  There are three, a sudoku, a cryptogram, and a word game.  The word game asks you to make x number of words out of a bigger word.  This was a follow up from an "unusual" screen I had six months ago.  I'm waiting and my imagination is running away with me.  What if they find something? What if it's bad?  To those who know me, this is typical.  The third puzzle asked me how many words can I make from the word "alarmist"?  Again with the irony.  I can't make this stuff up.  After I stopped laughing at myself, I found out my results are normal - physically anyway.

  A friend suggested I post this and I guess it's as good a rant as any.  It's a Tuesday evening and I am on my couch.  Sometime in 1998 I started training at a martial arts studio.  I began this for warped reasons and if anyone had told me back then that someday I was going to get my black belt I would have said they were crazy. When I was younger I worked out 4 times a week, after work.  I also had a regular gym membership back then.  I was going to 2 classes and 2 workouts each week.  I hadn't even cracked 30 then and I ate like a farm animal.  Them was the good old days.
   I broke up with a boyfriend and had to end the gym membership when a relationship ended.  I couldn't handle seeing my ex there.  I did find another gym and also another boyfriend.  Nine months later I got engaged.  My new love was not much for working out but went along to be polite.  We moved in together shortly before the wedding and with both of us working it became really tough to get both of us to the gym a half an hour from his house.  Eventually, the membership had to go as we weren't using it.  I decided to train an additional night at the dojang.
   Seventeen years later, I still train.  Our little girl is six and full of energy.  Mommy and Daddy are idiot tired.  The only one at our house who eats like a farm animal and can get away with it is four feet tall.
   What bothers me is that I find myself looking for almost any cheap excuse to avoid working out. It seems I can only come up with two justifiable reasons for skipping, not that I ever feel that way.  I am giving myself a "slug pass" on the first day of my period.  Who in their right mind would be in a hurry to put on white pants much less work out?? Shouldn't that be an automatic 'no thanks'? The other excuse is bad weather.  I will not drive during hellfire and brimstone coming down in the summer or an ice rink in the winter.  I like my car in the shape it's in, unwrinkled.
   I can only wonder what the hell happened to me. 'But you were a gym rat when you were younger, don't you enjoy working out?', my friend asked.  No, not really.  I don't think I ever did.  I began working out as a compulsion to keep my weight under control.  This later morphed into meeting a boyfriend at the gym.  This later morphed into following the suggestion of a martial arts instructor saying I really needed to train an additional night (aka take his class).  This has now degenerated into my contract is paid for I need to get my ass over there. The enthusiasm is underwhelming.  For reasons I have yet to grasp, I feel guilty as hell when I don't go.
   I worked out this evening and even though I didn't feel like going I'm glad I did. I lived.  It wasn't a cage match where the loser gets eaten.  Yes, once in a purple moon it's a tough workout.  For someone who's constantly in fear of getting too fluffy, isn't that a good thing? At least after a class,  I don't feel so bad about all the chocolate and alcohol. There are also esoteric benefits to going.  When I pull into the parking lot I usually check out the cars to see who's there.  Misery loves company.  I keep wanting to do better than that.
   The biggest problem I'm having is that after all these years I'm looking for something I can enjoy doing.  That's probably nuts.  Workouts are only enjoyable in ad campaigns aren't they?

   I wanted to take an informal survey.  Recently, my daughter and I attended a birthday party at a neighbor's house.  They threw a great party.  There were video games, a swimming pool, and plenty of treats.  Things were going fine behavior wise, too.  The problem began when my daughter wouldn't eat her pizza. I should have smelled something wrong then.  Usually, she doesn't eat much at parties I admit, but pizza is one of her favorites.  We had visited mom mom earlier that day and went swimming.  My daughter came out of the pool shivering but we figured it was just the cold water.  A couple of hours later, she was reluctant to go swimming at her friend's party.  She loves to swim, another hint mommy missed.  My girl finally mentions to her friend's mom that she doesn't feel well. At this point, I start to panic.  I felt her forehead and she was warm, not boiling but elevated.  Now I have no idea what to do.  I'm panicing a bit because I'm worried she may be contagious.  What if it's a nasty virus? I tried to sit her down and explain that if she wasn't feeling well, we should leave.  I had absolutely no luck and texted my husband for an assist.  Then I remembered that she's been taking bubble baths and she was in a public pool recently.  I calmed down a bit when I suspected a UTI (urinary tract infection).  She stayed for the rest of the party and seemed ok but I couldn't wait to get her out of there.  This was a Friday night.
 Saturday morning I decided to call our pediatrician and talk to a nurse.  I got the impression that we were most likely ok to keep her temperature down and just watch her.  Later, we went to a local farmer's market.  We love going there when they offer coupons and our girl absolutely loves their smoothies.  A few minutes after she finished her drink she was shivering and wanted to leave!  Finally, mommy woke up.  That's it, we need to call the doctor and get an appointment.  This was a Saturday afternoon.  Our doctor's office is great.  They have weekend hours.  We were too late for Saturday but got the earliest Sunday appointment we could.   By this time, our daughter had a full on fever and wasn't eating anything.  We get to the doctor's office and discover that a UTI was not the problem at all.  It's a virus.  They've been seeing a lot of it lately.  There was no vomiting and no diarrhea.  Yes, she was probably contagious at her friend's birthday party.  'It's everywhere' the doctor said.  So my question is 'Should I have caused a scene at a pary before I really knew for sure what was wrong?' Was I an a-hole for not pulling my six year old out of a birthday party and dealing with the ensuing oscar winning hissy fit? Has anyone else ran into this?  How do you handle it?

 Tempus Fugit sucks.  

   There is an old saying that goes it is now how old you are, it is how you are old.  It’s not being in my forties that’s the problem.  After all, my father once said, ‘It could be worse, you could have a kid your age.’.  It’s this desparate need I have to savor every moment, since, as I learned the hard way, you may not have as much time on this earth as you think you do.  The hardest thing I wrestle with is the now.  Perhaps I’m fighting ingrained, grown up habits.  Odd, since I live with the perfect teacher.

   My three year old wakes up every day happy and looking for fun.  Mommy wakes up most mornings praying for coffee and wondering how am I going to keep her occupied all day.  What the hell’s wrong with me?  Bored? How dare you?  Since when was life something to get through?  If that’s the case, I’m doing something wrong.  

   While there are places to go and things to clean, there are also horsies out the car window.  There are dragon shaped clouds, sand in your toes, and - dare I say it - occasional ice cream before dinner!  Look mommy, look!

   She is friendly and outgoing like her father.  While I have lived like a hamster in my home for seven years, not knowing many of our neighbors, my daughter will say hi to just about any grownup with two ears.  She will immediately tell them a terribly important story in which they have no idea what the hell she’s talking about.  You will never see grownups doing this.  My husband is one, but his english is fine and logical. 

   Exhausting and beautiful, she is an education and a gift.  She wants to feel and taste and see and smell and question everything.  She will also be teaching me patience for the rest of my life.   Sometimes, I am jealous at her simplicity.  If she gets hot, she just gets naked, problem solved.  Mommy will never again feel that free but I’m ok with that one - really ok.  

   Still, I don’t want her to be like me.  She is my second shot at learning how to enjoy, even the boring parts.  I’m pretty sure that when I grow up, I want to be three.  

After a bad storm in our area, we lost our satellite dish.  Horrors!  We were forced to talk to each other! The dish was out for about three weeks.  We got it restored yesterday and Maury was on.  Immediately I began to wonder why I missed it.

   There is a car commercial that depicts a young woman getting ready to leave on a trip.  Her voice is that of a toddler, which is how her father sees her.  As one who is knee deep in the parental time warp, I totally get it.  I wouldn’t buy the car, but I definitely understand distorted parental vision.  I could have sworn the three foot tall pteredactyl stomping around my house just got home from the hospital last week.  For that matter, didn’t I just celebrate my 30th birthday?  I sure did, about ten years ago.  

   I don’t feel that much older from day to day.  Occasionally, I get an obnoxious reminder of the contrary when I’m at my gym or bending over to pick up my daughter.  I’m not sure I even look much different than I did ten years ago except now the grey hair is getting easier to find. 

   Where I can see the changes are when I look at my daughter and my mom.  At two and a half, the changes in Claire are rapid and frequently surprising.  Every parent thinks their child is a genius but again, it’s a distorted view.  It’s not so much that she is brilliant but that I’m exhausted and unwittingly under constant surveillance.

   For a period of about twenty years, my mother was around forty.  Her hair was always the same color and she was constantly working.  Now that my father is gone and she is in a new, smaller home, she has reached her sixties.  I can see the age spots and the grey hair and how she gets tired now.  It saddens me in patches to understand that these are the days I need to hang onto with tooth and nail, leaving claw marks behind me.

   To our children, we start out brilliant, then we get stupid, and then as they get older, we slowly regain our intelligence.  At least, that’s how I hope it goes for me.  My mother thinks Claire is the smartest creature on the planet.  This must be in defiance of her mother’s DNA as I am increasingly convinced my mom thinks I’m a complete idiot. 

‘You have too much stuff.’ ( I hadn’t noticed , my eyes were closed.)

‘You need to get the pool cleaned.’ ( You mean the water isn’t supposed to match the grass?)

‘It’s dusty in here.’ (But I was saving those cobwebs for Halloween.)

There are a plethora of observations like these she’s convinced I need to be told because they aren’t done yet.  See previous paragraph about hanging onto these days blah blah blah.

   My mother and I have different priorities.  I choose not to put the housework ahead of other activities like playing with Claire, napping, baking and working out.  Cleaing is lower on my totem pole.  I’m sure she thinks my pole is upside down.  

   There are parts of her advice that I do cherish.  I know virtually nothing about plants and flowers and she is remarkably handy at small repairs.  I also do not know how to make pierogi from scratch, something I definitely plan to learn.  I do not know if I’ll gain any IQ points between now and the time I lose her.  Every April I get a little smarter when I do her tax return.  I can certainly hang onto that.  In the meantime, for now at least, my baby girl thinks I’m smart - but what does she know?

   The thing about this body is that it doesn’t feel like a body at all.  It’s more of an apartment building

with an active tenant downstairs.  There seems to be a combination of soccer, Irish step dancing, and

Tang Soo Do going on down there, frequently when I’m trying to go to sleep.  I remember I was an

“innie” a month or two ago.  I even had abs in my thirties.  The “occupant” is also making push ups 

more interesting since I can’t tighten my abs.  If I get any rounder, I’ll have to dig a hole in the floor.  I

feel a lot like a “weeble” with legs. Sometimes, the “tenant” feels like an angry old person banging a

broomstick against the ceiling. Is she mooning everybody through my clothes?  It would help me to

remember this the next time I talk to my boss.

    There are plenty of other changes I’ve noticed. (So many complaints, so little time.)  I miss having 

energy.  At over six months pregnant,  I am frequently bringing home a baby bumble bee just trying to

go to the store (when I’m not in the powder room).  This body also changes quickly, or maybe I’m just

slow on the uptake.  I’m frequently in need of pants. Last week I was fine, or at least ok, and this week

it’s ‘Merry Christmas!’  What’s with the belly?  I don’t remember strapping on a watermelon.  ‘Relax’,

my friend said, ‘you’re supposed to look like this, there’s a baby in there.’  This makes for a lot more of

me to haul around than I’m used to.

    The blessing is, I really haven’t gained as much weight as some do.  I am allegedly “carrying small”

in the sense that I am showing, but only to my friends, unless I’m wearing maternity clothes.  The

problem is, I’m having a hard time seeing it.  That’s the problem with eating disorders, you can

gain the weight back but the crap colored glasses never come off.  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see

myself objectively as others do.  Forget liking what I see.  I frequently get the fun house mirror view,

and not in a good way. 

     I am still working at my job, in between doctor’s appointments.  I haven’t told anyone there we are

pregnant.  I find it baffling that no one has said a word to me since I’ve gained 20 pounds over the last 

six months.  Then again, I frequently feel like I could show up in swim fins and a tutu and no one

would notice.  There’s the equal likelihood that no one cares, my office is not big on “warm fuzzies”. 

     I also miss having ankles.  My mom grew up on a farm in Poland.  One day recently, I took my

shoes off and I looked like the pigs feet in aspic she used to make, without the vinegar.  This does not 

look like a good summer for sandals.  I called the doctor’s office to ask where my ankles went and they

said “More fluids.”  More fluids??!!  I thought I was peeing enough now!  ‘Wasn’t I retaining water 

like the Hoover Damn, hence the swelling?’, I asked. “Hormones”, they said.  ‘O, Goody’, I said. 

     This brings me to another issue I have with this body, the ‘scrambled brain syndrome’ I keep

running into.  I was never what I considered ‘normal’ before.  I was however, able to eat lunch without

wearing it, not lose items I put back in the same place everyday, and I was able to have a conversation

with my spouse sans going from ok to furious or bawling nut job in 7.6 seconds.   The hormone fairy

flipped open my cranium, put a stick in there and really stirred things up. ( I hate that b**ch.)  I wish it

was possible to send my husband a bouquet of beer to his office.  ‘You’ve got two and a half months

left to go’, my friend said, ‘better get him a keg.’  Thanks, love you too.  We are decorating the nursery

with baby Looney Tunes.  How fitting.    

   Post script:  The evicted tensnt is now almost finished the first grade. I still don't have my body back.  Oh and Happy Mother's Day!

 Silence.  Oh no, she’s quiet and I can’t see her!  Claire, what are you up to?  Toddler plus quiet equals trouble.  My mistake for resting on the couch and thinking she was occupied.  I was right - she was.  

   It had been a while since I’d moved that quickly and mercifully, my back chose not to stop me.  I got up and went into my kitchen and sure enough, standing at the epicenter was my two year old.  My purse contents were scattered in about a four foot radius around our curly haired little cherub who just stood there about to open my lipstick with a “Who me?” look on her face.

   I immediately removed the offending cosmetic from her and plopped her diapered butt on our couch in the living room.  “WAAAAAAAAAAUUGH!!!” Yeah, yeah, I know, Management Unfair!

   This was just the latest in a string of my unpopular decisions like carrots and naptime.  I adjourn to the kitchen to reassemble the purse contents and make sure nothing scary had been eaten.  There’s a reason I have an open bottle of wine on my counter.  

    I can't believe Easter has come and gone.  Pretty soon I'll have a summer on my hands.  Normal humans would think this is a good thing.  It is in some respects.  Sleeping in is always a plus.  Our beach vacation is a huge plus.  I managed to get a summer camp lined up for our six year old.  I can hope to God it works out.  My problem will be what to do if it doesn't.  I think a concrete plan B would help.
   I'm adjusting to this whole new having to keep on top of things world our daughter has dragged us into.  It appears I no longer have the luxury of being a "pantser".  Things book up.  In a sense it's good to know I'm not alone in trying to keep a kid occupied during the summer.
   Now that there's actually a discernable season, Spring also means yard work.  It's especially true for us as we contemplate moving.  I had recently taken my mother on a long drive to Pennsylvania.  We got home around 3pm and my mom looks around our yard and pronounced it a nightmare. "You really need to clean up all this dead stuff!"
   While I agreed with her initial observation, it was the timing that threw me.  Immediately, she had us ripping out weeds, raking leaves and pruning annual flowers.  Thankfully, my spouse was right in there pitching along with our daughter.  She got bored quickly and mercifully, hurricane mom-mom ran out of steam. The problem was we were knee deep in a project we just couldn't stop in the middle. Eight trash bags of leaves and a couple of trash cans later we came in the house and collapsed.  Did I mention we were a tad behind in our outside maintenance?  (Let me emphasize "were".)
   We were lucky in that we had the weekend to recover.  In the end I admit I'm grateful we got it done.  The problem was the day was raw and cold and the entire episode was the last thing I was in the mood for.  My mom reminded me of something. I told her that our girl complained a lot about mommy 'making her do her homework and other things she hates'.  I was actually able to explain to our six year old that 'Mommies make you do things you don't want to and guess what?  They never stop!'  

For your consideration, a dated essay that's still true dammit.

    And they all lived happily ever after….a work in progress.  Who are all these happy bastards and how do I join that club?  Is it because I frequently find myself sucked into my own personal vortex that I can’t see clearly?  Maybe it’s because I’m too busy looking upward wondering what hit me that it’s so hard for me to learn whatever it is life is trying to teach me.

    Recently, I’ve been having a hard time understanding and acting on these lessons.  I think it’s because I haven’t been able to get past the initial hurts to see them clearly.  Over the last five years I lost three people very close to me.  The first, my Dad, was not surprising as he’d been sick.  It didn’t hurt any less knowing that it was coming but at least I had the chance to say everything I needed to before he was gone.  

   I guess it was the next two that I have the most trouble with.  The first issue I have is with God or the higher powers that be.  It’s because they were sudden and, in my opinion, undeserved.  Al was my former fiancé and while he wasn’t the right spouse for me, he was still a good person.  The last time we spoke he was just getting his life together.  All the issues that had plagued our relationship were finally becoming clear to him.  I even told him that it was good that he was figuring these things out now while he was still young enough to make the changes he wanted.  He was worried he was too old.  We had no idea he was right.  Three days after we spoke, he was gone.  

   Are we fated to live only a certain amount of time?  Why take away a person’s chance for a fresh start just when he was finally ready?  In Al’s case it was a freak accident while cleaning his truck.  My regrets are small potatoes compared to how unfairly his life was cut short.  I was sorry I hadn’t kept in touch with Al more closely over the years.  

   The last loss was probably the hardest and most shocking.  It was the hardest for me because I had so many regrets and missed opportunities.  Connie’s loss ripped a hole in our family.  I lost my sister, her son lost his mom, and my mother lost a daughter.  It doesn’t get much more shocking than a brain aneurism late at night. At six weeks old, Claire didn’t understand her Aunt’s funeral. 

   In the following two years, the only time I’ve seen my mother happy like she used to be was when she spent time with my daughter.  Why do I never hear about these kinds of things happening to bad people?  I remember a friend once remarked ‘What makes you think God wants the bad people any more than you do?’ 

   There are plenty of things I’m still struggling to understand.  The basic things I get.  Appreciate the time you have since you can never tell how much you’ll have.  Cherish your family and loved ones since they are only on loan from God.  Do what you love, life is short.  

   So why do I find myself stuck in my own personal vortex instead of acting on the lessons that hurt so much to acquire?  Wasn’t this sinking in?  Was it complacency and fear of the unknown?  I’m sure that’s some of it.  My vortex is a comfortable place, after all.  Breaking out of this pattern I’ve established takes more than courage, it needs justification, too.  If I’m not earning money, cleaning something, or spending time with Claire, I’m goofing off, right?  Focus on writing for the joy of it and the rest will take care of itself.  Have faith.

   Treating the pursuit of my dream as important as a job – what a fairy tale!

   

more drama

  I am writing a post to all the mommies of school age children to see if I can get some help.  My first grader, who is, by all accounts intelligent, has the focus of an overcaffeinated squirrel.  I am wondering what tricks if any I can use to get her to kill off her homework instead of dragging out the agony like painful peanut butter.  My grown up brain can't understand why she hasn't figured out the advantage to getting it over with.  I refuse to turn on the TV or let her have her ipad until it's done, you would think that would be some shred of an incentive.  I'm open to suggestions on this.  The funny part is first graders don't get much homework.  Meryl Streep also hasn't figured out that it only gets worse from here. I would have said that it's cabin fever by this point of the year but we've been going through this since September.   A therapist has pointed out that maybe she needs exercise right after school to blow off some energy in the hopes she'll be able to settle down.  I wouldn't have thought of this because she's thin.  I am planning to try it though in the hopes I'll save money on alcohol (not for her).  I hope your spring is going well.

More fun on the bunny trail

I understand that our daughter is in fact female but I had to stop and wonder after several hours of drama overload about first grade homework. This episode cost her soccer practice but she remained allegedly unfazed.   Once our mission was finally accomplished, our little cherub had the unmitigated gaul to tell me "I haven't had any treats, mommy."  A plus for hutzpah from our little baptized catholic.

Once again, we were listening to the weather and the recent reports about Boston getting pounded with ridiculous amounts of snow.  My six year old says, "I wish I was in Boston, mommy."  I was on the phone with my husband and I said, "Sometimes, we wish you were, too!"  It appears I gave birth to an amazing straight man.

evil parents

My six year old daughter looked into my open car trunk and said "I wish I could ride in there. " daddy and I looked at each other and said "sometimes we wish you could, too!" I love it when these things just write themselves.

Happy New year!

My opportunities to improve frequently taste like Brussels sprouts. The older I get the tougher it is to do things that are good for me.