The Queen's Rambles

Mike is home and he smells like Hugo Boss. I still fondly remember the scent from my days of being the perfume girl at Dillards. I loved that job, but only because I knew I was quitting in three months. I would have hated the stress of meeting sales goals if I had to do it long term, but since I knew I was outta there, I didn’t give a rat’s ass if I made my quota. I just flirted with boys who needed cologne and had my make-up done by the Lancome lady every day. What could be more fun?

I sold a $300 bottle of the rankest, foulest concoction to some old man. I almost felt guilty, but he really seemed to like it.

Anyway, I have no idea why he smells like Hugo Boss. My mother, the Lifetime television fanatic, is making googly eyes about it. She has weird thoughts. Erik’s regular karate teacher was gone for two days and she was convinced he was murdered by ninjas. Apparently in her day sickness was no excuse to skip work.

My mother is also making plans to kidnap one of my friends. She has suggested I invite my friend to Oregon.

Oh.

My.

God.

My friend is from an upper class New York City family. Her husband went to the same school Obama’s children go to. She’s a sassy black woman. My dad still says the n word on occasion. I can not even imagine bringing her to my home. Some of my closet friends have met my family and it has been mortifying, but I know their stories and they know my story and we can all just agree that my family is insane and I’m not like that. To bring someone from this life into that life? So so so not happening.

As if she would ever want to go visit my family.

I’m writing this entry because I went to sit in my chair and found The World Series of Poker on the TV. How is that a show? Even after all these years, I still don’t understand. At least the old Celebraty Poker shows were semi-entertaining (in a comatose sort of way). Mike actually records these games. Like. . . he had to figure out how to use the DVR and make an effort to specifically make the TV record them. I fundamentally do not understand.

I probably should get up there because I hear a very unhappy Elsa. My poor little sweetie-pie.

Do we have time for an Erik story?

We were at Sears and Erik decided he wanted to buy my mom a cheap, fake diamond ring. We get up to the cashier and he starts chatting with him (Erik with the cashier, not vice-versa).

“I’m going to buy my grandma a ring because I’m going to marry her and she’s going to be my wife.” The cashier looks slightly amused.

“Oh wait. I can’t marry my grandma. She’ll be dead when I’m old.”

The cashier looks horrified. “Uhhhh. . . that’s not very positive thinking.”

I’m so sad when I look at my LiveJournal calendar and see the majority of the squares are purple. They used to turn pink every day. A pink square was a square with an entry. Now? I’m lucky if I can get to two entries a week.

In fact, I shouldn’t even be writing this. I abandoned my mother. I told her I was brining Erik to the basement and left her with Elsa. Erik did come with me, but I guess I wasn’t entertaining enough. I’m sure she doesn’t mind too much, but I suppose it is not polite to be writing an entry instead of dealing with post-dark Erik. Post-dark Erik is a rascal, mainly because he is inside the house and he is not supposed to act like a wild, crazy man. Pre-dark Erik goes out to the park and runs around with the other kids for hours. What are we going to do this winter? I’m scared.

My mom is painting the nursery. She’s been at it for three days and finally has a coat of paint on two walls. She is very frustrated because there is never time to get anything done around here. It’s “the baby is sleeping, the kid has to go to school, the groceries need to be bought, the party needs to be planned, the playdate needs to be had, the floor needs to be vacuumed, the kid has to be picked up from school, the baby needs to sleep, the doctor’s appointment must be attended, the gym would be a good idea, the kid needs to run around outside, the dinner needs to be cooked, the laundry needs to be done, the baby is sleeping, the baby is sleeping, the baby is stinky, the kid needs to go to karate. . . ” When do we have time to paint?

Now that she’s in the thick of it, I hope it goes quickly. The room is tore apart, as happens when you paint, and I am going insane. This is why I never start anything. I can’t stand the in-between stage and I know I won’t be able to get anything done in a timely manner.

In other news, I talked to Erik’s teacher today and she claims she doesn’t tell the kids they can’t scribble-scrabble. She said maybe he picked that up from the other kids. That does make sense. Kids can be know-it-all bossy bosses (at least my kid can be a know-it-all bossy boss). But really? From what she says when she talks to the parents? I think some of it has to be coming from her.

I guess I better go rescue my mom. I hear a very sad Elsa. She’s turning into such a mama’s girl. I love this stage of infancy! What a shocker, eh? I loved Erik more than life itself, but I certainly did not love this stage of infancy with him. Hard to love a stage that seems to mainly be screaming. I can’t get over how different these two babies are.

I don’t know why this didn’t post when I wrote it on Friday. Weird.

—-
We had such a fun day today! Bethany and Annalie came up for lunch and a playdate at our castle playground. It’s so fun to talk to someone new. I like my friends, but our conversations can get a little static. Talking with a blogger is nice because we already know a lot of deeper things about each other and know our beliefs and philosophies so don’t have to tip-toe around things.

Plus, Erik and Annalie get along great. She’s older than him so gives him a run for his money, which he desperately needs. He has a big personality and is very used to being in control, so it’s nice when he has to listen to someone else. Not that he would agree.

Bethany also got to see my beautiful baby and understand my frustration. She has the most beautiful smile, but as soon as you pull out the camera she gets a puzzled look on her face and won’t smile. It’s very disappointing since I want lots of pictures so I can remember the smiles.

The only bad thing: my mom moved my skillets to the drawer under the stove. I never use that drawer. It never occurred to me that the skillets would be super hot (I was baking corn bread at 400F), so when I grabbed the metal handle of the pan I seared my thumb and finger. Talk about intense pain.

I immersed it in water, which I try not to do with burns because it usually makes it hurt worse over time. I used aloe. Nothing was helping until Bethany told me to take some ibuprofen. I never would have thought of that on my own, but it certainly did help.

I can’t wait to see Bethany’s pictures. I didn’t take very many, mainly because my brain was not working. That seems to be my perpetual state. Maybe it will start working in a year or two? I hope.

In other news that will only excite about three of you, I’ve figured out a night diaper solution! We used disposables for awhile, but they give her a major rash. I guess it’s a good thing we decided to do cloth. Erik never had a diaper rash, but poor Elsa has my skin.

Anyway, after much trial and error I’ve figured out the she doesn’t leak when I put her in a Blueberry at night. It’s a pocket diaper with a really, really wide crotch. I only have two useable ones. I have three with velcro, but her tummy is so big that it hangs over and the velcro irritates her skin. My friend has a snap press so I’m going to have to see if she knows anything about converting them to snap diapers. I don’t want to buy any more because they are crazy expensive unless you buy them on clearance. They only stock their clearance store every few months and of course they stocked it last week. I figured out they work for me yesterday. Duh!

Tonight is Erik’s big karate graduation. I hope I’m able to take pictures. The charger for the camera is missing even though it is always supposed to be plugged into the outlet next to my chair. My mom claims she didn’t touch it. I can’t imagine Mike touched it. Where did it go? Who knows? I suppose I’ll have to bring my old camera as a back-up even though I hate it.

Did you know the karate place stinks to high heaven? Lordy lou that place is nasty. We’ve been going eight weeks, so I guess I had that stupid cold for eight weeks. I never noticed the smell before, but I thought I was going to puke from it last night. My friend says it has smelled like that since we started. I think I need to invest in a nose plug.

Ok, Miss Elsa is getting rowdy so I better go be a good mommy and take care of my kid.

I am so glad I had company on Friday! I am not the best housekeeper, but we cleaned the place up and made it presentable. We didn’t totally ruin it this weekend, thus I was able to host a huge impromptu Halloween party this afternoon. Crazy! Totally crazy!

I was somehow roped into being the planner for our Halloween party (mainly because I do the newsletter and when I e-mailed the board, asking who was hosting, no one replied). We were going to do it at a local park, but it sounded a bit boring so I bought a pinata and came up with a “pin the bone on the skeleton” game. I spent money! The party must happen!

I went outside to pack up the van and the skies looked like they were about to open. I checked the forecast and the downpour was supposed to start about 15 minutes after our party was supposed to start.

Life is so busy that there was no good time for me to reschedule, so I sucked it up and said I would host. At the time it was only going to be four families, but we ended up with seven families. If you’ve ever been to my house you are probably wondering where I put seven families.

Luckily it didn’t rain, so I put seven families out on the deck, out in the yard, and all over the basement. It was a squishy party. Very squishy.

Do you remember my theory that Erik acts like a lunatic right around his birthday and half birthday? Sure enough, he went insane and went on a major crying jag because he didn’t get to go first in the “pin the bone” game. It’s lovely to be a hostess when your kid is standing out in front of the new neighbor’s house, howling louder than any wolf ever dreamed, wearing a Darth Vader costume.

Other than that, I think things went pretty well and people had fun. Made for a crazy day for me, but when aren’t my days crazy?

We also had Erik’s five year appt and Elsa’s six month appt. He’s 43 pounds/42 inches and she’s 23 pounds/27 inches. He’s still 50th and 5th percentile. She’s off the charts for both height and weight.

The doctor asked me what I’m feeding her and I explained that I’m giving her cereal and mashed banana but she just spits it out. “Well, yes, but what are you giving her as a supplement?” She kept asking and didn’t seem to think I understood the question. I would say I just make rich breast milk, but I think it comes down to genetics. Erik had the same breast milk and he was just a little guy.

I know, logically, that she is really big, esp when I can’t fit her into 12 month clothing, but the point was really driven home when my neighbor came by with her son. He’s three days older than Elsa and makes her look like a linebacker. I wouldn’t say he’s tiny, but he’s dwarfed by Elsa.

Other than that, things are good with both kids. Elsa started crawling and clapping her hands yesterday, so we’re in for a world of trouble.

Erik decided he hates school because he is “nervous” that he’ll scribble-scrabble (what his teacher calls coloring outside the lines). I asked the doctor if that was a developmentally appropriate expectation and she started spitting fire. She said I need to talk to the teacher ASAP because there is no way most five year olds, especially boys, care enough to color inside the lines. I’m glad I’m not crazy. I also thought it was a little too much. I really hope this teacher doesn’t instill a dislike of school in Erik. I plan on talking to her tomorrow.

I was surprised by the very thorough genital exam that Erik received. He was not happy with it at all. I guess those exams are normal, but it was weird to see.

The doctor did please me immensely when she refused to give Elsa her vaccinations today. I was going to tell her I wanted to delay them until she was feeling better, but before I got the chance the doctor said that she wouldn’t give them today because of her cold. Score!

I don’t know when we will all ever get well. Mike has been coughing so hard that he thinks he broke a rib. Poor guy has some cough syrup, but that’s it. He is in AZ for a few days so I hope he was allowed to take it in his carry-on.

I guess I better go upstairs and see if Erik is asleep and Elsa is awake. My mom has been a huge help, but she is not familiar with our patterns and missed the moment of night diaper/pajama change time so I’m not sure what’s going to happen tonight.

It’s Wednesday and I haven’t written about Erik’s birthday party? How can that be?

Not that it was all that exciting. The kids came. They saw. They were conquered by their black belt instructor.

Seriously, this was the best birthday party I’ve ever thrown, namely because I did not have to provide any entertainment or worry about the weather. Almost everything went well even though I forgot some of the cheese for the grown-up food platter and I couldn’t find the E candle until we were cleaning up. I was pretty worried that Erik would freak out, but my friend told him he was super cool because we had the candles set up as (STAR)RIK so she told him he was Star-rik and he thought that was awesome. Didn’t even notice that left four candles instead of five.

Eleven kids attended and only one didn’t participate. He kept asking his dad “why are the kids doing that?” He didn’t quite get that they were having fun. Of course, his mom is the one who told me Erik needs a shot of estrogen so it’s not like he’s the most manly little boy.

I was pretty impressed with the kids as a whole because they did way better than Erik’s regular karate class. There’s always a boy who runs around and doesn’t participate, a girl who lays down and cries and a boy who just lays down.

I’m just glad it’s all over and I can focus on the next project: room make-over! I have paint. I have rollers. I have blue tape. Do we have time? Not really.

I also have a whole slew of appointments and might finally, finally, finally be getting these ugly moles off my face! The last time I had an appointment to get them taken off was in December of 2003, but it ended up being the same day as my semi-emergency gall bladder removal. I was in so much pain from that, that the thought of having them hack things off my face wasn’t particularly pleasing. Seven years later and maybe this time they will really come off (assuming I don’t end up with semi-emergency dermoid cyst removal–one of my appointments is another sonogram to see what that crazy thing is doing.)

I also need to call and make a portrait appointment for the kids. I went to Burlington Coat Factory yesterday on a hunt for cute portrait things and remembered why I never shop there. It is so disgusting. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have homeless men peeing in their elevator. Then we waited over half an hour just to check out. Gross, gross, ill-managed store. I would say I’m never going there again, but I bought Elsa a super cute Christmas dress in size 12 month, thinking she could grow into it a little by Christmas.

Yeah.

Girl can’t even think about getting it over all her rolls of fat.

Eighteen month gown it is! I have the most beautiful 24 month gown that Grain Damaged sent for her, but it’s just too big for her.

Dressing a girl is so much fun. It takes all my will power not to buy a million little dresses, but what good are dresses once baby starts crawling? She’s almost there, if she can ever pick her belly off the ground. We need to get baby gates up this weekend because that child is on the move. She just throws her arm into her rolls and gets wherever she wants to go.

What else?

How about a little controversy? Do you read Julia of Here Be Hippogriffs fame? I love reading Julia. She’s one of the few famous bloggers that doesn’t irritate the snot out of me.

Anyway, her son is named Patrick and some of the kids at school are calling him Patricia. She wanted to know how to help and several people suggested working with him to come up with girl names for the other boys and teaching him to respond “Ok, Michelle, whatever you say” or some other snappy come back.

Other commenter were horrified that she would teach him to do something so “cruel” and said she needs to contact the teacher and go through the anti-bullying channels and tell Patrick he is above such things.

I fall firmly on the side of “help him come up with some snappy come backs.” It really didn’t sound like the kids were bullying him, as much as teasing him. Sure, it is no fun. He doesn’t like it. It should stop. A teacher could stop it in the classroom, but she doesn’t have power other places. I think it is so, so important for kids to learn to stand up for themselves. They have to learn how to tease back. If you don’t want to be a victim, you have to be able to take and dish out teasing. I really don’t understand how it would be cruel for a kid being called a girl name to turn it around and call the other kids by girl names. Not that he should instigate, of course, but defending himself? Why not? It would nip the problem in the bud pretty darned quick (assuming there is not something deeper going on).

I’m more old school in my approach, though. I could have very easily been bullied as a child. I was a goody-two shoes. I was fat. I was pimply. I didn’t have many friends.

The few times kids tried to physically pick on me I fought back (mainly hair pulling, probably). Guess what? I wasn’t picked on any more. Violence is not the answer, but standing up to bullies is really the only way to prevent further bullying. “Just ignore them” is such a grown-up thing to say that doesn’t help the child in any way, shape or form.

I know a lot of people disagree and that’s ok. You teach your kid what you want to teach your kid and I’ll take my kid to karate. They have a class creed that goes something like “always show others kindness, courtesy and respect but be prepared at all times to defend yourself.” It is a little shocking in our age of coddling children, but I like it.

Today is going to be insanity but there’s nothing I can do about it right now. Instead, I’ll grant you a post. Two in one week? Hold the phone, Nelly!

I thought I had a brilliant idea. I would call and get a hair appointment for this morning and then I wouldn’t have to shower–I could just have them wash my hair and cut it and I’d be good to go.

The salon doesn’t open until 11. What the heck? I thought salons opened early so they could curl the hair of all their old lady patrons. Or is that just in rural places with old ladies that still sit under the big bubble blow dryers?

I can’t run up to Costco and get the birthday cake because they don’t open to the public until 11.

I have one playdate schedule for 11 and one playdate scheduled for after that playdate and I have to pick up a birthday cake and get a haircut and get my brows waxed (mainly b/c we are going to a fancy 50 year birthday party after Erik’s birthday party).

Whew!

I’ve managed to combine the playdates, so that fixes the major problem of not having enough time. How is life so busy? I can’t wait until the birthday party is over and I can start focusing on something else.

Erik has really been enjoying karate, but yesterday he didn’t want to go because he wanted to play his new Wii game.

Instead of whining like usual, he imitated something he saw from TV–a full blown, throw-yourself-on-the-floor-pound-your-fists-kick-your-feet temper tantrum.

My mom and I were both stunned. He’s not done something like that since he was two years old. It was so ridiculous that I started laughing, then my mom started laughing, then Erik sat up, glared at us, then started laughing.

I’m glad we defused the situation and I hope he doesn’t try that again since it clearly didn’t get him what he wanted. I don’t need five to be the year of full blown temper tantrums.

What else?

My mom is moving full steam ahead on our plan to turn Erik’s old room into a nursery. I had to tell her to slow down because I just can’t concentrate on it right now. The woman has no slow speed, but Mike is not going to allow her to paint it herself because she is the sloppiest painter in the universe. She doesn’t understand that even though she has eyeballs and should be able to SEE that her paint skills are total crap. She is of the mind that done is better than perfect. A good attitude about some things, but not about paint. We bought the paint yesterday (a very, very light lavender) so I have to keep her out of it until next week.

I love having my mom here and we haven’t had any fights, but it can be difficult to have someone with a different brain organizing all your things.

Plus, she is the most literal person on the planet. Yesterday I said “we need to take these mattresses out of the curb so the trash collectors will take them.” We go out there with them and then she starts trying to literally balance them on the curb. I ask her what she’s doing and she’s clueless “but you said we had to put them on the curb. . . ”

It can be a challenge communicating with her when she’s in literal mode.

I guess I better go take a shower if we’re going to get this day moving.

We had an intense day of birthday fun today. Erik turned five, which was the big attraction. Elsa turned 6 months, which was barely a blip on our radar. Poor second baby getting short shrift. Not like she really noticed.

Erik had very specific plans for the day that I tried to accommodate as best I could. Shouldn’t a child’s birthday be completely magical?

He wanted a big hunk of chocolate cake for breakfast, which made me shudder. Of course, I always think cake is a great breakfast but motherhood is more of a “do as I say, not as I do” type of thing when it comes to nutrition. Instead of cake, I baked some banana muffins with cocoa powder, oats and whole wheat flour. No frosting. Not that bad, I suppose. My major worry was that he would be sugared up all day and then have a bunch of sugar crashes and end up having a cranky, yucky day. That’s no birthday!

He was very specific about taking green cupcakes to school and the little park down the street, so I ordered three dozen from Safeway even though the baker was confused. “No cupcake cake? Just regular cupcakes? We have regular cupcakes.” Yes, they did. But not green.

That all worked out well and now everyone in Safeway knows he is five and he loves green.

After school we went to a big Moms Club playdate at a friends house and the kids could do some crafty stuff, decorate cupcakes or just play around. Erik managed to stick three stickers on a foam bat before he left the table. He didn’t even want a cupcake (which made me happy). The sugar crash happened at the party and we had to leave early because he threw a metal doll thing and hit a girl in the head. I can’t stand it when he throws things. I will not tolerate it.

On the way home I let him sit in the back row of the van in a regular booster seat instead of his regular five point harness booster. He sits there sometimes and it is no biggie, but today he undid the seatbelt so we had to stop and I had to make him move to his five point harness. Oh the screaming! Oh the wailing!

Not very magical, but I suppose even the most perfect day has to have a little meltdown when you’re dealing with a five year old.

Once home he opened his family gifts and was thrilled beyond measure with a double ended light saber, metal detector, globe, a couple of Wii games and a Darth Vader costume. We could barely pry him away from his gifts to go to his “little park party.” We walked down to the little HOA park at the end of the cul de sac and distributed two dozen cupcakes. I was worried there wouldn’t be enough but a couple of families weren’t there and it worked out perfectly. My mom was really impressed that all the kids were running up to Erik and hugging him (ages 3-15) before they even saw the cupcakes. I love our neighborhood. We have a great group of kids and they all love Erik. What more could I want?

It’s kind of funny that they love him so much. His personality has a lot to do with it. As one of the dads at the preschool told me, the kid has a lot of personality. He’s destined to be class clown or class president or both. But he’s also popular because he’s exotic. There are other white children in our neighborhood, but they live down toward the other end of the road and none of them ever go out to play at the park. Erik is the only blond, blue eyed kid in the bunch and the other kids find it fascinating.

Anyway, where was I?

Ok. Cupcakes for breakfast, preschool cupcakes, playdate, presents, park cupcakes. How many cupcakes does that make? Way, way too many.

I wanted to do something special for dinner, but by the time dinner rolled around we were all pretty exhausted and Erik just wanted to play with his new games and eat cold steak.

Now we just have to get through the next few days, then we might be able to rest. Tomorrow it is pumpkin patch with preschool, Friday is a Moms Club park playdate, Saturday is the big birthday party followed by another big birthday party for one of Mike’s former colleagues. Whew! We will be resting properly on Sunday!

Did I mention my mom is here? That helps so much. Things like laundry and organizing are getting done and I am eternally grateful, even if I can’t find anything now. I’ll learn the system. She has torn apart Erik’s old room and moved things around (all with my blessing–I have plans, but no time to implement them) so I think we’ll be able to start painting Elsa’s new room on Tuesday.

So what is it with wakey babies? Oh yeah. The whole baby thing kind of explains it all.

We seem to be on an “up till 1 am” kick, which doesn’t do nice things for me when I have a boy who is up at 7. Today he let me sleep in till 9 because our house was cold and he didn’t have any clothes on so he didn’t want to get out of his bed. That’s 8 hours of sleep, so what am I complaining about? I don’t even know. Except the hours don’t match my natural sleep rhythms.

I turned the heat on, so maybe my house will stop smelling moldy. All of a sudden all I can smell is mold, mold, everywhere. So gross. I suppose the heat will dry everything out and make my nose ache, but it is kind of nice to not be sweltering.

I offered to take Erik to the store and buy him a pair of pajamas and he looked at me like I was crazy. “Why would I want pajamas?” Indeed. He had a fit when I picked him up from school yesterday and the teacher made him put his coat on. She apologized to me later. She just thought she was helping, not realizing his Swedish blood makes him some weird ice viking.

Maybe she doesn’t know about his Swedish blood. I was talking to another mom about the teacher and we both were complaining that she talks too fast and our boys don’t listen so then the teacher says our boys don’t know how to sequence. The other mom is of Middle Eastern heritage but speaks perfect English. The teacher made a comment that maybe the boy didn’t understand the story because it was in English. The mom was pretty upset b/c the boy only speaks English. What a major assumption to make based on skin color! The funny thing is, two of the white boys in the class (Erik and one of his buds) don’t speak 100% English at home. What happens when you assume?

It is really cold and I don’t have any socks or outerwear for dear Elsa. I guess the prospect of winter never occurred to me. When Erik was a baby he was so small that I just wrapped him in blankets and that was that.

How do I not have socks for my baby?

We had friends over yesterday afternoon. I didn’t think they would come because the mom has been working through food issues with her son and our plans for the afternoon involved making cookies. I invited them anyway because the boys get bored and she is having a hard time adjusting to her son’s new schedule (he goes to a real school instead of daycare so he gets home at 3 instead of 5).

Erik. . . oh sweet Erik. As my friend said, the boy needs a shot of estrogen because he is the most competitive person on the planet. I don’t think she was exaggerating. He wanted the cookie making to be a contest. We kept asking him how that would work and he didn’t know, but he kept declaring himself the winner.

My original plan was to just have the boys work together on one batch of cookies, but as I was driving Erik home and talking about it I realized that plan wouldn’t work, so they each got their own bowl and made half a batch. I premeasured all the ingredients before his friend got here, so all the boys had to do was dump them in and stir. Erik was all over it, but his friend thought it was way too hard and wouldn’t do it. His mom did it and it was no big deal, but it is just amazing to me how different two children can me.

Ok, guess I better go and help Erik build a club house before he bursts. This is the first time he has ever requested use of his big Christmas gift from last year (big cardboard building panels). Maybe they weren’t a total waste after all.

I do not like being up at midnight with a very alert baby. I guess I’m pretty lucky that it doesn’t happen often, but I sure am dreading tomorrow morning.

Not that we are getting much sleep anyways. I thought my cough was going away, but it came back with a vengeance last night. Sleep is not easy when you have to jump out of bed to go puke. Yeah. I’ve been coughing so hard I puke. Fun times! Feels like I’ve been doing an amazing abs workout.

I haven’t worked out in so long I don’t know if I still know how. I either need to get back to the gym or cancel my membership. There is only one option in that statement. I MUST get back to the gym. I just have to get healthy first.

Can you believe Erik is going to be five in nine days? I can’t! I was looking at pictures from last year’s party and can’t believe how much he’s matured this year. What is happening to my baby?

I went to Safeway and had a look through their cake book, totally destroying it in the process. Why does their cake book look like it should be featured on Cake Wrecks? I’m going to order from them even though they do a crappy decorating job because they have pretty good cake. Maybe I need to get a Costco membership.

Anyway, the cake book didn’t have any Star Wars cakes so unless I get a Costco membership and they have Star Wars cakes, I’ll have to have Safeway do the same thing they did last year–do the cake with a Star Trek background but no toys and I’ll add my own toppers. It actually turned out really cute last year.

What was I saying about destroying the book? It was this icing coated, nasty three ring binder thing that didn’t have a front or back. Half the pages were in backwards so I obviously wasn’t the first person to crack the thing open. It fell apart in my hands and I put it back together while the baker talked to me about the Star Wars cake. He said they could do a Star Wars cake but they didn’t have any . . . something. I finally gleaned that he meant they didn’t have the topper, but it took about five minutes of me saying “what? what?” which is not really helpful when the problem is not understanding the accent vs. not hearing.

In other news, I’ve come up with a partial solution to my hungry neighbor kids problem. Fruit! Duh! Bananas are dirt cheap, very filling and very nutritious. I don’t mind handing out bananas. My other cheap options included peanut butter and I am not comfortable handing out peanut butter to kids I don’t know. Erik has been handing out his yogurts. I hate to sound cheap, but hot damn! When you are suddenly passing out an extra 4-10 yogurts in a day that really adds up!

Basically there are three hungry children. They come down here and have no boundaries. Now that I’m feeling better I can manage them a lot better, but if I am upstairs trying to put the baby away Erik will let them in the house (even though he’s been told not to) and I’ll hear all kinds of hooting and hollering (mostly Erik, they are pretty quiet) and my kitchen will look like the Tasmanian Devil has taken a tour (mostly Erik’s fault; he loves playing waiter).

If I pass out snacks to those three, they will go down the street and tell the other kids that I have yogurt or graham crackers or whatever and suddenly I’ll have anywhere from 4-11 kids on my porch wanting a snack. I doubt any of them are actually hungry. Most of them have parents that might not want them spoiling their dinners. A few of them really shouldn’t be having extra snacks. I don’t want to be mean about the fat kids. I was one. I just know that people giving me extra food were cool at the time, but they weren’t ultimately doing me any favors.

So fruit. It’s pretty boring. Since I started that I haven’t had the masses of children lining up at my door. I just have the standard three that want ice water and food. I think I need to take Heather’s suggestion and put a cooler full of ice out on the porch.

I have tried to turn them away from my door when they just want water. I quiz them each time “Why can’t you get water at home? Don’t you have a sink?” and they always tell me they don’t have water, they only have “soder.” Erik has no idea what soda is, so he’ll tell me “mom, they only have soder!” How can I not give kids water? Even if it does drive me crazy. I am a hard ass when it comes to one thing–no kids in my house! We need to work on this a lot more because Erik loves to invite them in and if I am not right at the door he’ll open it and I’ll come up from the basement or down from the bedroom and find the whole mass standing around, staring at all our stuff. I just can’t take the risk of something happening to one of the kids or having any weird accusations happening from the neighbors. You never know with people.

What else?

The other day we were having pork for dinner and Erik got totally excited. I was confused because I didn’t know he had a particular fondness for pork, but I quickly became puzzled when he talked about it being round and green and crunchy. I may not be the best cook in the world, but surely I don’t cook green pork.

I eventually figured out that he meant fried okra, something he has been requesting on and off all summer. It’s been well over a years since I’ve made it because Safeway and Giant no longer carry okra. I have no idea how he remembered it.

I had a brilliant idea (very rare these days!) and suggested we take a trip to the Asian market. I know they use okra in Indian cooking so I was hoping we might find some.

We hit the jackpot! They had a whole mountain of okra, and it was really fresh and wonderful looking. Erik did a dance of joy right in middle of the aisle. Since that was the only thing we needed I hated to use my credit card so I borrowed some of his cash, which made him feel even more important.

It was quite the experience since no one in there was willing to speak English with us (not sure if they couldn’t or just wouldn’t) but Erik was unwilling to leave the store without introducing himself and his baby and his pork to everyone. His pork as in his okra. Nothing perverted.

Ohhhh! Baby is crying! Could this mean she is tired? That would be spectacular. Guess this is long enough as it is.