The Queen's Rambles

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.