The Queen's Rambles

My phone has been buzzing all day, but I never use it for text messaging so didn’t realize that’s what all the buzz was about. When I finally checked the voice messages I had a ton of messages from various Tennessee numbers (I have a Tennessee number, which is what happens when you order your cell phone online) all asking for sex. I was incensed. What kind of man thinks he’s going to get a little something something when his opening line is “sup i need head”

I mean, seriously? What self-respecting woman wouldn’t give the guy a swift kick to the head with that kind of behavior? I certainly wouldn’t be rushing over to fill this guy’s needs.

I noticed one guy (I am just assuming gender) had texted three times, so I texted him back “wrong number, pig.”

He texted me right back and apparently he can use proper English. He let me know that my phone number had been posted on Craigslist as an escort ad.

Well then.

I guess he wasn’t a bad guy after all. He may be after a prostitute, but he had some kernel of human decency to let me know what was going on.

There was another guy who was persistent and I texted him back as well, but he didn’t care that it was a wrong number. He still wanted to “git wit it.”

I have contacted Craigslist, so hopefully they can help. I just checked my voice mail and want to delete everything without listening. Ten new messages from today. I can just imagine.

I am kind of chuckling. It is annoying and gross, but it is an adventure. At this point I truly do believe it was a typo or mistake and not a malicious prank since all the numbers are coming from Tennessee.

Holy cats, you guys. I got a taste of the life of a mother of five today and I am so, so glad that it is not my life. Of course, my beautiful children would all be perfectly well behaved and stand meekly by while I took care of business so I shouldn’t compare the life of a mother with my experiences this morning.

Yes, that is very tongue in cheek. I have well behaved children, but it takes a LOT of work to keep them that way!

Anyway, we went to a tour of the recycling facility this morning and then my friend and I headed over to a McDonald’s with a play area. I got out of the van and noticed her car was in middle of the road and she wasn’t turning into the lot.

Then I saw a huge metal thing laying on the road in front of her car.

Somehow the connector thing that makes your steering wheel move your wheels had fallen off and her car was stuck in middle of a very, very busy road.

Thankfully she was only going 5 miles an hour and we were right in front of the McDonald’s. She had her two boys (ages 1 and 3) plus her cousins (6 and 13) in the car. The 13 year old was a pretty good kid. He and I wrangled all the kids into the McDonald’s, all while cars were honking like crazy as if we chose to just randomly stop on one of the busiest roads in the region (355 for locals) to unload a bunch of toddlers.

The toddlers were all really good, though it was a job to keep the 1 year old from wandering off. Ordering five happy meals for kids who have no clue what they want? Not good! I had some dirty looks from other customers, especially when I asked the 6 year old what his name was. Like I would kidnap all these kids and take them to McDonald’s for lunch? Sounds like a nightmare to me.

The only kid that gave me real problems was the 6 year old. He kept screaming “I want soda! I want soda! I want soda!” Ummmm. Yeah, kid, I don’t buy soda for little kids. If your parents want you to have soda, that’s their business, but I’m not a supplier. Especially when you are yelling in my face about it.

The tow truck arrived pretty in a fairly timely manner and my friend’s husband was able to get to us quickly, even though his boss was in a meeting and he had to leave without telling him. He was afraid his boss was going to be mad at him, but somehow I think his boss will be understanding (my husband is his boss and I find he’s a pretty nice guy).

All’s well that ends well, I suppose. It could have been soooooooo much worse. It doesn’t even bear thinking about losing steering while flying down the freeway at 80mph.

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Ellen asked me if I would be happy about my mom moving here if there wasn’t all the emotional baggage involved with my sister’s children. I’ve been thinking about that a lot and the answer is “I’m not sure.” I can see that it would be awesome to have her support so near by. Mike and I could have a weekend to ourselves once in a while, maybe. But I don’t think I can handle it if she wants to spend every single weekend with us. She’s kind of exhausting. I don’t think this plan will pan out at all, so I am not investing a lot of thought into it.

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I am investing some thought into a romantic get-away the first week of April! My mom will be here (at least she has plane tickets purchased) so we want to go someplace before she gets called back to Oregon and scuttles our plans. I would love to fly someplace warm, but we are a little afraid to invest that much money into the plan.

I was kind of looking at Colonial Williamsburg, but how romantic would that be? I don’t know, I’ve never been there. Any ideas for a short, romantic road trip from the DC area in early April?

Will I really be able to leave Elsa for that long? I know Erik will be totally fine, but my baby! My sweet baby! I’ve never been away from her overnight, even though she HATES me at night and hits me if I come near her (she snuggles with daddy all night long).

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I really must go do something useful now. Maybe get dinner cooked, then put it in the crockpot to keep it warm. We have soccer tonight from 5-6 and I’ve already used my pizza night this week. Mike is going out with some old workmates so I am not really motivated to make dinner at all. I guess I could make myself some bean soup and make some little pigs in a blanket for the kids.

Or. . . I could go paint! Actually, I won’t be doing any painting today. I need to spackle, sand and caulk today. I painted the dining room ceiling yesterday, so I’m totally committed to this plan. Our ceilings are awful. We didn’t have them painted when we moved in because all the people who gave us estimates said it was impossible to paint a textured ceiling with a roller and it would have been over double the cost to have them paint the ceiling with brushes. I actually kind of like the look of white ceilings with my beachy colors, but they desperately need something and I am not in love with the idea of trying to keep from getting any paint on the ceiling.

I’ve never been able to figure out why it was so impossible to paint the ceiling with a roller, so I finally googled it. I found out that you can, indeed, roller over this textured mess if you use a high nap roller. I had no problems at all yesterday, except for one big glop in my eye.

My mom painted our house all the time, but she never did it correctly so I never learned how to make things look good. She’s just paint over all the nicks, peelings, etc and hope the paint would fix it.

Memo: the paint never fixed it.

All this spackling is like magic. Such a revelation! It may take me a year, but it is going to make me happy when it is done. I have hated our paint job for four years!

How did I manage to post on LJ almost every day when my computer was in the shop, yet now I have nothing? For one, I’ve been super busy catching up on all my computing tasks. Plus, I guess I feel like I don’t have an excuse to write a super short, crappy little entry. I need to ramble! Somehow I think people prefer the short little crappy entries. My rambles can be hard to follow, even for me.

Erik had a playdate at a classmate’s house this afternoon. I looked up the address on google map and went down a rabbit hole into these people’s lives. Holy shit. No wonder they live in a huge, double-fancy house that I can only dream of. The woman invented an e-mail system before the internet even existed. They are both completely brilliant, which gives me anxiety about my own lack of brilliance.

I’ve volunteered to take over our PTA website and get it updated. Why the hell am I doing the webpage with my hodge-podge, make-due approach when we have freakin’ internet geniuses that have won major global awards for their computery excellence? I suppose they don’t have time to throw together a silly PTA webpage.

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I’ve had major problems with my back since Elsa was four months old. Sometimes it gets better, but then sometimes it is so bad I can barely stand up. This week I think I have found the culprit. Brooks shoes! I ordered my first pair when Elsa was a baby. I wore them to the ground and got a new pair. I like them better than New Balance simply because the colors are prettier.

My back had been fine this week (no gym time, Elsa’s nose won’t stop running so she can’t go to childcare) but then we went on a big family walk yesterday. Five minutes down the trail and my back was on fire.

I hope the Brooks are the true culprit. I just ordered a pair of New Balance and can’t wait for them to arrive. Three years of pain caused by shoes? And here I thought it was because Elsa was so heavy when she was a baby.

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Speaking of shoes, I got a new pair if Mary Janes in the mail yesterday and they are too big. TOO BIG! You people with your normal feet have no idea how bizarre it is for my giant Fred Flintstone feet to be flopping around in a pair of clown shoes. I wear an 11WW. I tried these shoes on and started laughing at the ridiculousness of it.

I am sending them back and trying a size 10W. I haven’t worn a 10W since fourth grade. Hopefully they fit because they felt incredibly comfortable, except for the whole swallowing up my foot thing.

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I have been unhappy with our paint since we moved into our house four years ago. The colors are lovely, but the company we hired did a TERRIBLE job. Absolutely terrible. We shouldn’t have even paid them.

Four years later with two kids and regular playdates with upwards of a dozen toddlers running around and the paint is a complete wreck. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’ve been spackling and sanding walls all day. The idea of painting is completely overwhelming when I think of the WHOLE FREAKIN’ FIRST FLOOR. Instead, I’m trying to force myself into thinking in parts. I could totally spackle and sand a wall one day, then paint that wall the next day. It might take a few weeks, but I could get it done. I don’t know how efficient that would be, but it is the only way I can even consider doing this project without giving myself an anxiety attack.

I want to have the painting done before spring break because. . .

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My mother is coming and she’s a terrible painter.

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Mom thinks she is going to move out to the Maryland panhandle (much more affordable than here, but close enough to visit regularly). She is flying in for a month to check it out and rent a place, then she’s going home to collect her belongings and move out here. Her house is on the market. My sister is approved for HUD and just needs a house (though supposedly her husband is going to live in the house and she is going to a rehab program in CA [I really hope that is true but you know their life never works out]). My mom says her plans are set.

I am not convinced this is going to work out. I am pretty irked that she told Erik about this harebrained scheme and now he’s excited. She was mad at me because I told her not to tell him things because he gets very disappointed when they don’t happen. She thought I was saying she is unreliable.

Ummmmm.

Yeah, pretty much.

It’s not really her fault, but she is my sister’s enabler and the only one who provides a stable life for my nephews and niece. She needs to stop telling my kids things are going to happen. Maybe they will (ha), maybe they won’t. Just keep it under your damn hat, lady.

I am not thrilled about this whole idea. It’s her life and she deserves some happiness. She shouldn’t have to be my sister’s keeper (my sister is 37 years old. She needs to grow the fuck up and get her act together, but she’s a meth head). But who is going to be watching out for the kids? That’s the part I can’t reconcile. I haven’t been writing about this because it upsets me so badly and there’s nothing I can do. The state of Oregon is going to have a lot to answer for when my nephews and/or niece turn up dead or sold as sex slaves.

I guess that’s all I’ve got tonight. I need to be in bed right now. I’m supposed to get up at 7:15 every morning, but as soon as Mike pops out of bed at 6 am, I become Elsa’s lovey. I can’t sleep with a child fondling me. Why is this child still in our bed? She starts the night in her bed, but when we wake up in the morning she’s in with us.

My baby is back! I am glad I wasn’t completely without internet while my laptop was gone. I finally learned a lot of the features of my smart phone, so it will be a lot more useful, but I hate thumb typing or voice posting. I can type about 90 wpm on a regular keyboard. Thumb typing is not very efficient compared to my awesomesauce secretarial skills. My 9th grade keyboarding teacher would never believe it, but with modern keyboards you don’t have to correct your errors with correction tape and throw out a page if you mess up too badly. Do you even know what correction tape is? I’m willing to bet some of you have no idea!

Now that my computer is back, I have a lot of work to do. First up, drafting an e-mail on behalf of one of my groups, explaining to a lady why we do not want her to provide birthday cupcakes at our general meeting every month. It is a very nice idea and we appreciate it, but not everyone wants their toddler to have a cupcake at 10 in the morning. It was extremely messy and our guest speaker was not impressed with waiting for us to finish our “birthday party.” This is going to be an incredibly difficult e-mail to draft because this lady is very sensitive (but has no problem eviscerating anyone else, which makes it easier, except I know she is going to FREAK).

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I just got a call that my plans for next Sunday are not happening. We were going to a Murder at the Mansion mystery show thing, but there were not enough tickets sold. We can either go on Saturday or get our money back. Our sitter said she can watch the kids on Saturday, but now I’m sort of leaning toward getting our money back and doing something else on Sunday. I suppose I’ll let Mike have some input, since it is his date too. It would be novel to have some time alone with no kids. I’m sure we could think of SOMETHING to do. Ha. I need a little romance in my life.

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Google ads are freaking me out. An ad just popped up for the exact outfit that Elsa is wearing RIGHT NOW. I bought it at a brick and mortar store months ago!

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I really need to go cook dinner. I’m supposed to take Erik to family game night at school in an hour. How am I going to get dinner cooked before then? Why have I been carressing my laptop keys instead of taking care of my family? Bad mommy. Bad, bad mommy.

UGH UGH UGH. I want to scream and yell and throw a tantrum (we had a counselor at MOMS Club today who said if we don’t want our children to yell and scream and throw temper tantrums we shouldn’t yell and scream and throw temper tanturms. Oh. Point taken.).

My computer has to go to the shop. It will be gone for 7-10 days, maybe longer. We no longer have a desktop. I have a phone. Erik has a tablet that I can’t work worth beans. This is going to suuuuuuuuuuuck. I am trying to notify all the people I need to notify that might need something from me via e-mail, but did I get them all? I don’t know.

I am going to miss my friends. I am going to miss YOU. This is so silly, isn’t it? It’s just a computer. But it’s my LIFELINE.

I didn’t curse out an Indian man about this whole thing, but I sure wanted to. Not his fault. Not his fault. But I DID buy the protection that came with home service. Why doesn’t this count toward that? I don’t understand. I had a guy come out here once and it was a beautiful thing. So why can’t this problem (actually a whole list of problems) be solved with a random guy showing up at my house and making me happy?

At least backing everything up is easy. I have Carbonite, the best money we’ve ever spent. Seriously, if you don’t have Carbonite or some sort of automatic back-up program, do it NOW. You know you are never going to go in and back it all up. Not until you have the BSOD and it’s too late! Carbonite backs everything up in the background and you can easily rebuild your files if you ever need to do so. I think it is $45/year. I swear they aren’t paying me for this commercial.

It doesn’t back up programs so I was even smart enough to remember to find my product key for Publisher and back it up. I hope they don’t wipe the drive, though. What a pain that is. The system is fine. I just have massive hardware failure (CD ROM drive fell out, plastic casing around screen is losing pieces, the computer randomly shuts off if it is not plugged in even though it has a new battery and A/C adapter).

So. . . if you want to see me, you’ll have to be my FB friend I guess. I will probably figure out everything there is to know about my phone during these trying weeks. Maybe I’ll even get some reading done. I’m about half-way through the Matched trilogy and it’s pretty good. It’s another YA near future dysotopia story.

Speaking of reading, I just finished the Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks and really enjoyed it, even though he picked some of his world building straight out of Wheel of Time (or else he and RJ used all the same sources; I know a lot of people say WoT is very derivative). I’ve got a little project going on where I am trying to read some of the popular fantasy that I’ve been missing the past 7 years. The best thing about this project is that a lot of these new-to-me authors have completed series out so I don’t have to wait for the next book. I am not a patient person, but in the past at least I could pick up a new book and feel like I knew what was happening. These days I have no freakin’ clue what is happening in the latest book when there are 1-2 years between publication dates.

I feel kind of bad posting this. First world problems, big time. But they are my problems and I am having an anxiety attack and you need to know why I am suddenly ignoring you. I know I am not the best commenter, but I read every single post on my friend’s page every day and I *think* the comments, even if I don’t write them.

So my new jacket is a bust. I thought I could live with a pinkish-purple coat, but it is the most vile shade of pink I’ve ever seen, so I didn’t remove the tags. I wanted to take it out on a cold day and give it a test, just in case it was amazing. I know the weather around here can change on a dime, and it did so this week. We went from 70s to snowing in about 24 hours. I tested the jacket out and it did not keep me as warm as I had envisioned. I’m sure it is a perfectly nice jacket for a cool day, but I thought it was going to be warm like my unattractive make-shift layers. I think I just have to buck up and realize that layers are warm because. . . they are layers. Or something. I don’t even know what I’m talking about. My head is spinning after explaining the suspension of dibelief to Erik.

Erik is obsessed with reading the Magic Tree House books. I’m glad he’s obsessed with reading something and I guess they are supposed to be good for kids, but they drive me crazy. For those who don’t know about these books, they are about these two American kids who find a magic treehouse that sends them on adventures. It turns out that the magic treehouse is the creation of Morgan Le Faye from Camelot and she needs these two American kids to go and learn things (I’m not sure why because Erik likes big numbers, so he will only read the later books, not measly number 1 or 2). Later Merlin sends these kids on missions to do things like convince Charles Dickens to not stop writing. Because MORGAN Le FAYE of CAMELOT is going to build a treehouse. A treehouse that ends up in rural Pennsylvania in the year 20XX. What? IT MAKES NO SENSE.

Tonight the white bread American children are in ancient Japan, trying not to stick out. No one seems to notice the two very white kids in middle of the kingdom that is closed off to all foreigners. One master samurai guy even helps them without even asking them where they are from, what they are doing, or why the girl has blonde hair. ARGH!

I know, I know. They are children’s books. They are vehicles for children to learn about different times and places. They don’t have to make any sense. I should let it go; suspend disbelief; realize I am not the target audience.

Tonight Erik was even asking me why the people they meet want to tell them all about the place they live. “So if the people they meet think they are just normal people who are walking around, why do they start telling them all these facts? Shouldn’t they already know all those facts if they live there?”

Yes, yes indeed.

I tried to explain the whole suspension of disbelief thing to him, but he didn’t get it. He generally doesn’t enjoy fiction anyway because it isn’t real, so I am not surprised he is starting to question the very thinly constructed conceit behind these books.

Anyway, I cleaned the house today–thrill a minute. We went grocery shopping and it was so cold that I couldn’t face going back out for a trip to the gym. If it was just me, that’d be one thing, but Elsa is such a pain to get loaded into the van when the howling wind is ripping my face off. She has to hold her pretzels, water cat and at least one random toy (today it was her “blue mermaid” which is actually purple). She also has to wear her gloves, but she changes her mind about which gloves she wants to wear half-way to the car and sits down screaming until everything has been remedied to her satisfaction. And, of course, she has to go FIRST. You can’t scootch ahead of her. If there is any trash or newspapers or random objects on the way from the house to the car, she has to carefully examine them and possibly lick them (and we wonder why she’s always sick?).

I still needed to work out, but I have been researching fat burning and know from personal experience that a lower heart rate during exercise burns fat (but does not necessarily provide cardio). I decided to do a cleaning “work out” instead of going to the gym, which was kind of nice since it resulted in clean cabinet doors. The whole thing with cleaning though, is that it just sucks. Big revelation at 5! Stay tuned! It is so disheartening to look around thirty minutes later and see that everything that looked great is back to looking like a bunch of rampaging baboons went through the house.

Ok, maybe not *quite* that bad. Erik is pretty good with helping me pick things up, but Elsa is equally good at dumping toys all over the house just for the thrill of dumping them. I’m about to go medieval on her and take away everything but a single doll.

She really is a sweet little thing. She plays so happily and likes to sit on my lap and pretend she’s a dog. She’s just stubborn and has her very particular way of doing things. Nothing strange or noteworthy. She’s a toddler and she acts like one. A very cute, frustrating, delightful, silly toddler.

Oh, and why do shoes have pee in them? When a little girl pees her pants the urine runs down her legs and pools in her shoes. Thankfully that hasn’t happened in a while.

Gross gross gross gross gross.

I just found the source of the mystery smell.

There was a bag in the closet (does anyone else hang bags on hangers in their hall closet so they don’t lose the stuff and the kids don’t get into it? I have my MOMS Club bag, my EBay bag, and a few other bags). This particular stinky bag was full of Christmas gifts that I have ZERO recollection purchasing. As I dug into the bag (Jake and the Pirates puzzle? Ariel Barbie? Purple toddler digital camera????? Where the f— did this stuff come from????) the smell got worse and worse. I was so confused. Do things wrapped in plastic eventually smell this bad from all the evil plastic chemicals? WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE????

Then came the discovery.

An almost gone, completely rotten, moldy, black, smelly banana. Ohhhhhh, my friends, you should be glad you did not have to see the thing I saw in that bag.

As luck would have it, it is in the mid-60s this morning! Windows are wide open and I hope the smell dissipates now that the problem has been removed. I never knew a rotten banana would have such a chemical smell. Too bad it completely ruined what looked to be a brand new reusable grocery bag.

Notice the part where I said it was in the mid-60s? I heard it is supposed to get up to the 70s this week. And my new super warm winter coat just arrived! Perfect timing. It was a pretty sweet deal for the coat, so I won’t complain.

And now Elsa’s birthday gifts are purchased (if I remember the bag of mystery items exists in about three months)!

So much for “buy nothing new” month. I have been much more mindful of my purchases, but there were a few things that I couldn’t push off. Namely, clothes for Erik.

He was supposed to be getting dressed yesterday morning, but instead he was crying that none of his clothes fit. I went up to try to get him to stop being so ridiculous and just put his danged clothes on, but he was right. We worked together to try to get a pair of pants on him, but even shaking him in like a little toddler didn’t work. He was like the Hulk, busting out of those bad boys. How did my itty-bitty-widdle baby get so big?

We ended up pulling a pair of dirty sweats out of the laundry. I’m just glad we had those! In the past I’ve bought 10 pairs of the exact same brand of pants, so they are all outgrown at the same time. The only reason I didn’t do that this season was because it was almost impossible to find size 7s in the store. Now I’ve learned a lesson: buy different brands so you don’t have a Hulkesque emergency three minutes before the bus is due to arrive (even if you do send a kid in dirty cloths. Niiiiiice).

I also had to buy new socks for both the kids. I just found out he hates ankle socks. I only buy ankle socks. Whoops.

I’m going to buy a new recliner this weekend. My poor chair bit the dust months ago, but we are a slow people and just deal with a chair that has an arm at a right angle to the seat. Makes it easier for the whole family to jump on in! Now the chair smells like paint or something with a distinct chemical odor. I don’t know what, but I can’t sit in it. That sucker is getting dumped and I am getting a new chair. SO THERE! Except. . . ugh. Hopefully we can find a chair in stock and not have to wait six weeks for an order to come through.

Now for the funny stuff.

My son, my son.

We had “the talk” a few months ago but that was just the beginning of the conversation. Truly, we’ve been having conversations about biology for years and years. The Talk was just the moment of announcing that the penis went into the vagina. He doesn’t want to talk about that, but he does want to talk about how babies come out.

I wouldn’t wrestle with him tonight because I was having cramps, so I was trying to explain my “tummy ache” to him. I didn’t mention my period, but he remembers and asked if I was having my “bloody time”. He is absolutely disgusted that girls have to have a period every single month. “Mom, I just don’t get it. Why doesn’t your brain just tell itself it doesn’t want a baby and make the blood and egg and everything stop?”

Don’t we all wish it was that simple?

Apparently he’s been talking about gender differences with a girl at his table. She says girls are best because they can have babies and babies are sooooooo cute. He has explained to her that child birth hurts really badly and that she is going to have blood every month and being a girl is horrible. (I did not tell him being a girl is horrible, that’s his own conclusion). “Mom, she just won’t listen to me. She’s going to have a baby and be screaming when it comes out because it is going to hurt worse than hard poop and she’ll think ‘Hey, Erik was right. I should have listened to him!'” You probably had to be there, but I couldn’t quit laughing.

He also hypothesized that if he tried to have a baby come out of his penis it would “break [his] nuts.”

I hope we have started these lessons young enough that he internalizes them and preventing unwanted pregnancies* is completely natural and normal. Please, please, please. He is so loving and touchy-feely that I worry about his teen self.

*And STDs of course, but we have not had a conversation about those yet.

Thanks everyone, for the Land’s End recommendations. I didn’t buy anything from Land’s End, but I came very close. Ha!

Actually, when Erik was a toddler we got a hand-me-down Lands End jacket and that thing was the bomb. I just saw it on a kid last week (at least the fifth toddler to wear it!) and it’s still going strong. At the time I thought Land’s End must be the bo-shizzle (I have no idea what that means or why I am talking like this), so I bought some other things from there and they were all really crappy. Seams falling apart, material on boots flaking after one wear, etc. I found out the super-jacket was from Pre-Sears days and all my crappy purchases were Post-Sears. Sooooooo. . . I’m a little scared to buy stuff from Land’s End. It sounds like you guys all have positive experiences with Lands End, though?

However, it reminded me of LL Bean (and someone else mentioned LL Bean) so I’ve been waffling on spending a hundred bucks on a new jacket. They have the EXACT thing I was thinking of–fleece with an internal wind resistant layer!–but that’s a lot of money to spend in my “buy nothing new” month.

I just checked the jacket again and it’s on sale! Only $45! I bought it. They only had one color in my size, which I am not very fond of (a purple with pinkish tones) but if it keeps me warm I’ll learn to deal with it.

New topic: We did an art project that Erik actually enjoyed, today. Amazing! He normally hates art, but this one captured his interest. Each year Camp Fire hosts an art competition with a different theme. This year is print making. To get your badge you have to learn about the process as well as submit a piece of art. This is the reason we toured the money factory last week.

I’ve been trying to come up with a project that was a little more fun than cutting an apple in half and making prints. I finally read enough about printmaking to feel confident in letting him go to town. My bonus child was here, so I let her have fun too. She always makes Erik enjoy things more. She’s a very happy, fun child. She’s also a middle child so she knows how to be a mediator and go with the flow–much needed in our household!

The art project turned out to be pretty simple once we got started. I bought some washable block ink (should have just used paint), a roller and some foam sheets. The kids used Erik’s three styluses (styli?) from his DS to draw designs in the foam sheets. Then they rolled the ink on a cookie tray to really cover the roller, then inked the foam sheet to cover the design. Then we pressed the foam onto paper and they had a pretty reverse-picture! I bought some nice quality paper for the art competition, but we did most of our prints on butcher paper to test them out. They each made several and Erik said it was the most fun art thing he’s ever done. I was very surprised by the easy clean-up. I’ll try to post some pictures later.

Next topic: My house smells so bad. I notice it most when I am sitting in my living room chair, which makes me wonder if my neighbors left some trash in their house before they left on their month long trip to Pakistan. I can’t figure out what else it could be. We cleaned the crab tank, cleaned the house, put clementines down the garbage disposal. I really hope they didn’t leave trash out. We don’t need a cockroach infestation. We live in townhouses, so what one neighbor does effects the whole row, unfortunetly.

It has been cold out! Big excitement, eh? I live in the DC area so I’m really spoiled when it comes to the weather. This 15F with biting wind is freeeeeezing. Funny that when I lived in Sweden I could go out when it was -15C and be ok. Of course, I had clothing made for the cold and that makes all the difference.

What’s the point of talking about the weather? I want you to help me! I’ve discovered that I stay super warm if I wear my old, ratty maternity fleece jacket under my much-too-large water proof, wind resistant rain jacket. The fleece keeps me cozy, the rain jacket keeps the wind out.

As you can imagine this is a super sleek, super sexy looking silhouette that really compliments my slim figure. Hahahahaha. I’ve already got extra padding, I don’t need to dress this poorly. I love my regular winter coat, but it is only good in our normal winter weather. It is not cutting it in this crappy cold, windy month.

So, surely some person way smarter than me has come up with a fleece/windcoat combo that is much more attractive than my home made version. Give me reccs! Plus-sized reccs! Your regular sized stores probably have a lot of cute things, but those reccs mean absolutely nothing to me since I can’t wear them. It’s like showing a child a picture of a big birthday cake and then saying “but you can never have it because it’s not your birthday! Hahahahahaha!”

I do understand that when people give reccs to clothes that I can never, ever wear they are not intentionally being cruel. I don’t think most non-plus sized people truly understand the lack of options their plus-sized friends face. There are a lot more options today than there were ten or twenty years ago, but when it comes to something specific there is often NOTHING. Or maybe one choice that you can either suck up and get even if you don’t like it or just do without.

Also, any reccs for plus sized long underwear would be awesome. I am using my Swedish pair and they are falling apart.

I’ll probably get all this stuff ordered and the sun will come out. We’ll be in short sleeves in February. But at least I’d be prepared for next year, right?

Ok, guess I better go help Erik with the soil preparations for the hermit crabs. They don’t need their soil changed often. They are very clean animals, but one died and it is getting kind of moldy smelling because I can’t find the itty bitty pieces of food that they hide away in their very hot, humid tank. It’s quite a process and I am willfully trying to make Erik do a good chunk of it to teach him responsibility. That’s not working out so well. He just stands in the middle of the living room and turns around in circles instead of actually looking for the pink bucket. But why can’t we use the green bucket? Or the orange bucket? Or the blue bucket?

THEY ALL HAVE HOLES, CHILD!

I finally had him take all those buckets to the sink to test them out and he learned that sometimes mommy does know something. I feel like everyone around here thinks they know more than me, when I’m the one doing the vast majority of momming all the creatures and I know what needs to be done and the secrets that make life easier. We can not leave the house without an adequate supply of pretzels or water cat (name of Elsa’s water bottle). Those shoes don’t work. Those gloves look ok, but in about ten minutes we are going to have a meltdown if the bubble gloves are not on standby. Those buckets have holes. That crab hides inside that shack and hangs upside down. The popcorn must be unsalted. You need three drops of blue. Those shoes have pee in them. And so on.

Here’s my big problem in life: I want to be more motivated, but the longer I sit the more I think I am losing productivity and the more I hate myself and the less I am motivated. Makes so much sense! Our house is in desperate need of interior paint, but that is a job I am not up to tackling. Sooooooo much work. I don’t even know where to begin.

Maybe I can begin by pressing post, then going to do some laundry.