Lion and Magic Boy

NOTE: Do not compose blog posts, or anything else for that matter, while you are in bed and about to go to sleep, telling yourself that of course you will remember it in the morning, how obvious, a perfect moron would remember it, because of course you will not. Though perhaps you will after all remember the general gist of what the post was going to be about, but naturally whatever you come up with the next day pales in comparison to the Pulitzer material you had in your head the night before.

On Friday the alarm failed to go off. Oh, right, I know what you’re thinking. It so was not human error, either! And I did remember to set it. Yes I did! And it was set for the correct time, not twelve hours ahead/behind. And the alarm volume was on high. Yes, I tested it. Twice! So stop that. I would think that the fact that this happened THREE TIMES in the past two weeks, including on the first day of school, would be enough to make it clear that it was simply Time To Buy a New Clock.

So, just so you know? Telling your 11-year-old that it’s now the time he’d normally be getting on the bus except that today he’s just waking up at that time AND THE BUS IS LEAVING WITHOUT HIM is a really really really good way to see someone jump around the room screaming and freaking out. Not that that happened.

But we actually all got out the door within about 22 minutes, breakfasts in hand, to drive him to school and then come right back because the other two still had their respective busses to catch, which is not bad considering that Someone Who Shall Not Be Named had to first stuff the entire Library of Congress into his backpack, even though he was advised to do all that the night before, haha I will have time for that in the morning.

So the clock. The old clock was a $10 job from Target two years ago, which in my calculations has cost me about 1.3 cents per day. Doesn’t that seem like a lot for a clock? I am sure I can do better.

Obviously, Target is the place to go for cheap clocks that quit working after two years, so back there we went. And there was a Clock of Perfection, not too large and with huge blue numbers useful for someone who is blind at night and is tired of squinting to see the tiny red numbers, and did I mention they were blue? Which seemed a little less hello-I-am-your-clock-numbers-and-I-am-here-to-see -that-you-know-what-time-it-is-all-hours-of-the-day-and-especially-at-night.

But alas, though there was a display model of the Clock of Perfection there was nothing resembling it in a box that could be purchased and lovingly taken home and placed reverently on one’s bedside table, no that would be too easy, so we piled in the car and drove the .1 miles across a huge parking lot to Bed, Bath and Beyond thinking Bed! That means clocks! Which is a place that causes children to begin yelling something unintelligible or to poke their siblings and then pretend innocence or to run incessant circles around the stacks of merchandise littering the crowded aisles. Not that that happened either, as all my children behave perfectly at all times.  All of them!  And it’s a place that caused Nathaniel to remark after we were safely out of there that he planned on having them hire him one day to completely redesign the store, because it badly needed the services of a competant interior designer. To which I could do nothing but agree as the place is crowded and has bad flow and weird energy and annoys me no end, and every single one I have been in is exactly the same, and that remark coupled with the design work he’s done in our house tells me that it’s clear to me now what Nathaniel is going to be as an adult, and woe be to you if you hire him and you expect a designer/architect who will listen to what YOU want, as he will know exactly what is best in the situation and will go ahead and do it anyway and you know what, he’ll be right.

P.S. And then I welcomed another $10 red-numbered clock to my bedroom because there was nothing better and yes, I Gave Up.

[tags] alarm clocks, missing the bus, freaking out, Bed Bath and Beyond, big box retail rules[/tags]

So after doing my bloggy diligence this morning I indeed hoisted myself up on the bike yet again for a scintillating ragweed-laden ride.

And came back and sat in a stupor on the couch wondering where everyone was and why I was so tired. Oh! Pollen! Combined with it’s-a-school-day!

And then Eric came home and was exhausted from the excitement of his first day back at school and the bus driver getting lost on the way home and all, so we he fell asleep not long after, without even having had lunch. Eric doesn’t miss many meals so you had to know it was serious. And when he awoke he was ravenous and all he could do was cry his chagrin at the unfairness of life and maybe some apple slices?

And Serena had homework but forgot to bring home a very very crucial part, and it is almost as if she as never had homework before…oh wait, she hasn’t. But she’s making her 9’s and maybe her 10’s backwards still so we worked on that. And there was reading and she went to bed. The end.

And Nathaniel has the worst case of poison ivy I have ever seen. Almost (do NOT click on that link if you are eating). But he complains more than anyone else I have ever known, complains while jumping around and sort of screaming a little and hyperventilating, which would be quite funny if he wasn’t so serious about it so I have to bite my lip and pretend I have something in my eye.

And my lungs itch and my eyes itch and I am pretty sure those are places that you don’t want itching and I know for a fact that I can blame it all on breathing.

Today Nathaniel and Serena were registered for public school. That this feels like a big deal to me is probably evidence that I’m still holding some ambivalence despite my positive feelings about the decision. But after we found the district’s office, hidden and signless in a corner of the brand-new high school next to the brand-new middle school Nathaniel will be attending, to be sat down by a humorless administrative drone who looked remarkably like this one and surrendered a lot of paperwork, I found the feeling to be somewhat anti-climactic.

For the rest of the day I found myself saying things to the children like, “Well! You’re registered for public school now!”

Coincidentally, today was the first time a neighborhood kid rang the bell and asked if one of the occupants could play. It was Dylan, a 6th-grader like Nathaniel, a head shorter than Nathaniel and a couple years more worldly, but a nice kid who Nathaniel and Serena have been hanging out with outside a few times in the past couple of weeks. He came in to see the cats and ended up staying for dinner even after I showed him what it was (brown rice curry with spinach, garlic, and tofu), though he didn’t seem to be hungry, poor kid.

He referred to me as “Yes, ma’am!”, and while I understood it was likely ingrained in him since infancy (military parents) I still wanted to slap him after about the 37th time he said it. His bravado faded a little when he talked about his family, 4 adults and four kids living under the same-sized roof as ours. I wanted to hug him and promise him a trip to the art museum (he likes to draw and even drew me a picture but has never been in a museum) and tell him he’s welcome here any time. Nathaniel has never had a neighborhood friend before and has only had a few orchestrated playdates with school friends who lived far away.

So was it coincidental that on the very day I was questioning my decision to take the kids out of their school and put them into a brand-new situation, one fraught with detritus from No Child Left Behind and bunches of tough kids who are exposed to a whole lot of things mine have yet to imagine, a friend shows up on the doorstep?

Nah.

[tags]kids, neighborhoods, neighborhood kids, school, public school, Waldorf school[/tags]

Oh, is my ambivalence showing? Pardon me. Who wouldn’t want to come home to a house where:

1. Two cats had free rein over the place for a week.
2. I didn’t have time to vacuum up Eric’s cake crumbs before I left.
3. And why was Eric eating cake in the first place? Bad, bad, bad.
4. Three children revert to their natural tendencies.
5. Which for one includes pouring water from one cup to another and unpacking all my CD’s.
6. And for the other two involves three hours of arguing followed by separate silence from their rooms (strictly voluntary).
7. Turns out they were up last night until 1 am, which explains a fair amount.
8. Only about 800 emails.
9. Though of course I haven’t had time to look at any of them.
10. So if any are yours, sorry. Maybe tomorrow.

I’m pretty sure that this morning was an “I told you so” moment.

Way back in the days when the House of Ex and the House of Karen were one, the primary Jobs of Ex involved mowing the grass and removing trash from the house, as well as some occasional random work with wires and tubes.

The trash thing, though, always got me. it was a huge production. I always had to be informed, with a weighty sigh of satisfaction, that the trash was OUT. This happened twice a week but it had the same import of, say, finishing a doctoral thesis.

Often, last-minute trash items (we’re talking half a small bag here) would be hurriedly run up the hill to join their friends being tossed at that very moment into the trash truck. A few times, bags of trash were actually carried through neighbors yards in order to catch the truck as it made its way up the hill, around the corner, and on its way.

I used to mock The Ex for this.

After all, we’re just talking trash here. Couldn’t it wait until the next pickup day?

This morning I awoke with trash on my mind. I remembered that I had forgotten to put out the big blue container last night. Oh well, the truck won’t come for hours. I can just lie here awhile. I thought about turning over for a bit, waking up slowly. After all, the kids weren’t here and there was no pressure to wake up, no one in the corner growling and singing. I’ll just lie here peacefully for a bit…

A truck just pulled into the neighborhood.

A trash truck???!

I got out of bed, pulled on some clothes, dashed downstairs and looked out the window. Sure enough, the trash truck! Damn! Within seconds I was dragging the big blue container to the curb.

I walked back to the house, stumbling a little because in my haste I had just put on glasses instead of my usual contacts, but feeling a little like I had finished a doctoral thesis: the trash was OUT!!

[tags] trash, trash truck, doctoral thesis, I told you so [/tags]

Dawn!!

Who made a lovely guess, CONGRATULATIONS!! And please don’t forget to contact me about your prize! Appearing here as guest blogger! You may even use as much punctutation as you want!

However, I have to tell you that you still guessed WRONG, in fact everyone guessed WRONG!!

It was the paneer.

So you have been warned, at least about paneer. DON’T leave it in your fridge opened for five weeks or so, or YOU WILL REGRET IT.

Regrets.

I’ve had a few.

Not really, actually.

Except I do regret not picking up the slatty-thing that keeps the mattress from falling down in Eric’s new Big Boy Bed, because that forgetting caused us to have to make Yet Another Trip To Ikea today.

And I have a sinking feeling that I will highly regret having a Bed Without Bars On It At All for Eric, as I am guessing that the ensuing sense of freedom will be quite enthralling for him. He already has me trained to allow him to go to sleep on my bed, a bed that is approximately a gazillion feet wide when you’re Eric’s size but that still is apparently not big enough when you are a small restless person who likes to sit up a lot while sleeping and then fall back again in any position that asserts itself, causing said small restless person to fall off said bed and wake up, sliding slowly, sleepily, and stealthily down the stairs to where the Center of the Universe (aka “Mama”) is busily pecking away at the keyboard.

Still, it was fun, as usual, to build his bed, but first we had to build my new Ikea dresser to replace the hand-me-down I have been using since 1982, and I figure it’s about time I had some grown-up furniture, you know? And the dresser came with a helpful manual for putting-together that was about as thick as a Harry Potter book and about as entertaining.

Eventually, though, we fell into a rhythm. Nathaniel played with Eric on my bed while Serena and I put the thing together. Later Nathaniel went downstairs and began cooking dinner. Upstairs we built drawers, six of them, step by step, while downstairs we could hear pots and pans clanking and vegetables being chopped. Usually I am the one making those sounds and the feeling was indescribable knowing that I had capable children doing useful work, a family moving together in rhythm to create things of beauty. Eric played with the pillows on my bed and sang, so I know he felt it too.

And later he sat quietly and held screws until I needed them, handing them silently to me one by one.

[tags]contest, paneer, Ikea, families[/tags]

I know, I promised this post days ago, and I’m finally just now getting to it. That’s the kind of week it’s been, though: I sat down here with the laptop 2 hours ago, wrote one measly post for Strollerderby, and suddenly it’s 2 hours later. How does that happen? Anybody else in a time warp lately?

So. Anyway. My fridge.

The thing is, for about the last, what, two weeks? Three? there’s been this smell wafting out every time someone opened it. Not a good smell. Which meant that I should take a look and see what’s in there that’s causing it, right? That’s what anyone would do.

Not if they are me.

No, I just ended up finding ways to avoid opening the fridge to begin with.

It’s harder to do much cooking that way, but I managed. By not doing much cooking.

And I’d leave stuff out longer. And avoid getting drinks of water from the weird filtered water dispenser that the manufacturer was too cheap to put on the outside of the door like everybody else and instead you have to open the door and reach in and hope your glass is close to the dispenser because unless you’re four feet tall you can’t actually see the dispenser.

But even with those techniques I’d find myself saying several times a day, to myself, Self? You should really see what’s making that smell!

And so today’s your lucky day. I think I found it. And it has been properly disposed of. And no animals or small children were harmed in the process.

Was it:

A. Three-week old brown rice and vegetables with a coconut milk curry sauce that no one liked and therefore didn’t eat, stored in a ceramic bowl with foil haphazardly draped over it.

B. Three-week old broccoli that everyone requested that I cook one night and then hardly ate any of and that I forgot to include in a later meal and sort of then forgot about. Same thing with the foil. I have issues with plastic containers.

C. Ginseng root brought home from Vancouver which I keep forgetting to use the rest of to make tea (it makes rather a nice tea especially if you mix it with chamomile, but it works with other teas as well), still in its original not-really-sealed plastic bag-from-Vancouver.

D. Opened package of paneer, a fresh cheese in Indian cuisine that comes in rather tasteless white cubes that no one but me would eat except I’m not really doing dairy these days and they’re not bad on a salad actually, but then I forgot about them for, oh, like a month.

E. Carton containing a few dregs of buttermilk left over from making Irish brown bread way back in May, and also some great salad dressing when combined with plain yogurt and herbs. But again, back in May.

F. Jar containing remnants of kimchi I smuggled home illegally from Vancouver in June, which I am carefully meting out because I haven’t yet located a local source, and it’s fermented anyway so does it really go bad?

G. The old box of clementines that still had some in there that I covered up with the new box, the one that everyone has been taking from, leaving all those old clementines to do what old clementines do.

You’re going to blame the kimchi, I know it. It has a reputation.

But was it the kimchi? Or was it something else? Cast your vote below. Winner selected at random.

WINNER SHALL APPEAR HERE AS GUEST BLOGGER AT SOME FUTURE DATE!

The other day I was doing some routine admin work here on the blog and noticed a category or two that didn’t contain very many posts.

Bodily Functions, I mused. Haven’t had a post in that category in while. Hmm.

Sunday the children came home from nearly a week with their dad. Naturally they are all taller now. Plus, apparently tennis is the new passion over there at the House of Ex, as Nathaniel couldn’t seem to talk of anything else. He was “pretty good”, he said, and was a “finesse player” who could put the ball pretty much “anywhere he wants,” although he “wasn’t playing as well” as he had in the beginning.

Nearly every hour there was a plea that we all go out and play tennis.

Of course, we have no rackets. And I haven’t played since about high school. For good reason: I’m pretty bad at it.

Still, far be it from me to deny the Wimbledon Champion of 2021, so obviously we had to go out and buy tennis rackets.

Which we did. Yesterday. There was Nathaniel, expertly testing rackets at various price points there in the aisle at the sporting goods store. The more he tested and swung there in the store, the better player I assumed he was.

We got back home mere seconds before Eric’s bus pulled up.

Not long after, everybody had eaten lunch and Nathaniel asked me to install his miniblinds. The blinds that have sat, still in the boxes they came in, in the computer room since about January. I mean April. Whatever. Those blinds.

So I struck a deal with Nathaniel: two blinds installed in exchange for him watching Eric. Makes sense, right?

I got my power tools ready and carted the blinds upstairs and got to work. It had been so long since I did the first-floor blinds that I sort of forgot how they were installed. No matter, I can just look at the ones I did downstairs and see how I did it. No problem. So I took a look and went back upstairs, my iPod draining brain cells out through my ears via the insidious white cord, and began drilling and screwing.

Um.

Too bad I installed it wrong, the things that you screw in that hold the blinds in place. Oops. I came downstairs to check to see what I did wrong. Oh. I see now. I’m heading back up when one of the children announces to no one in particular:

“Eric has poop.”

Inhale. Ah yes, so he does.

I approach Eric. There’s a sort of….brown clayish substance on his hands, both of them.

Except it’s…not clay. Not clay at all.

I whisk him to the sink to wash his hands (poop! I am touching poop! is the refrain I am trying to suppress in my head) while asking, um, yelling at, the children to get me wipes, a diaper, etc.

Nathaniel can’t help at all because he is dancing around holding his nose and gagging.

How anyone could miss the sight of Eric digging both hands into the back of his diaper is beyond me. Seriously, 11-year olds can take responsibility, can’t they? Grr.

I went up to finish the installation and decided it was the day to put the blinds up in my own room as well, but I knew better than to leave the three of them alone any longer so I coaxed them all upstairs into my room and closed the door so no one would escape and announced that Nathaniel would be installing the blinds.

And I taught him how to use a drill and electric screwdriver, mark his spots, put the blind together, the whole thing. He did it all while I read a book to Eric three times. Some things I learned about Nathaniel:

1. He is much more of a perfectionist than I am. I didn’t know that was possible. I kept explaining that blind installation wasn’t an exact science, but he wasn’t buying it. I’m sure the one he did is installed more securely than the ones I did, though.

2. He gets frustrated easily. One blind was enough; never mind that there were two windows.

After that, flush with our power-tool euphoria, we decided to put together the something-in-an-IKEA-box that’s also been in the computer room since about last November, maybe. Don’t know, it’s been so long, and no one could actually remember what the item is.

So we assembled our tools and opened the box to reveal…lots of little pieces of woodish stuff and metal. And a multi-page instruction book. The kind that causes my eyeballs to roll up inside my head.

But apparently Nathaniel has patience for this stuff and he took over. Eric helped a lot, too. Later I found important pieces upstairs, while meanwhile he had found the shoes I didn’t wear at BlogHer which I have thus far refused to put away as that would admit Final Defeat, which he brought down and placed neatly on the kitchen table.

So there’s Nathaniel, patiently going through the steps to assemble the IKEA thing, and I am helping and Serena is helping; plenty of screwdrivers for all!

I decided to clean up the boxes from the blinds and the box from the IKEA item and take them out to the trash.

It’s great they can assemble this themselves, I thought. They’re really growing up. I was proud.

It took a couple of minutes to smash the boxes enough so that they’d fit in the trash container.

When I got back in the house, two of the three children were crying. Screaming, really.

It took about 4.5 seconds to assess the situation and send someone to his room. After that I spent 5 minutes getting the details and threatening death if ever again “unkind hands” were used in response to frustration arising from unkind words. Then they switched places and I was able to speak of the evils of little-sister taunting and arrogance, as well as the even larger evil of retaliation.

Apparently they each got pretty much what they deserved, however.

Today was the day to try out the new tennis rackets. Nathaniel was immensely kind, patient, and helpful as he waited for me to write two posts over at Babble, but we finally made it over to the courts. I was a little nervous about playing since it’s been quite a long time, and Nathaniel sounded pretty good.

He’s not.

Neither is Serena.

But we hit balls to one another and chased an awful lot of them. After about 30 minutes Nathaniel was able to maintain a short volley, and I remembered how to serve. Serena was able to hit one over the net with fair consistency.

And we finally played a game and Nathaniel won.

So we’ll do it again.

But I still have some furniture to finish assembling.
[tags]Ikea, sibling rivalry, tennis, poop [/tags]

Yesterday we were on a mission. The assignment: to drive to IKEA, buy our stuff, and be back before Eric got home on his bus from school.

Parameters:
1. Eric is gone from 7:50am to 12:30 or so. So the window was 4.5 hours.
2. IKEA doesn’t open until 10 am.
3. But it takes a good 45 minutes to an hour, depending on traffic, to get there.
4. We also desperately needed trash bags. More on that later.
5. Which means another stop. Plus Nathaniel was jonesing for chocolate from Whole Foods.
6. Whole Foods and the trash bag store are on the way to IKEA, depending on which way you go.
7. But we’d have, what, about an hour in IKEA? To be on the safe side? (Death if we’re not home when Eric arrives on the bus). Is that possible, only an hour in IKEA? Has it ever been done? That place is a time-sucker.

I was planning to leave as soon after 8 am as possible, so as to make our other stops on the way. However, I didn’t count on the fact that I was going to get only two hour’s sleep the night before, and I was moving very slowly.

More. Coffee.

This took the onus off Nathaniel and Serena, who figured they had plenty of time to play. Inertia set in.

We left at 8:45.

I forgot to go the Whole Foods/trash bag way, and we hopped onto the turnpike. Because it’s faster.

And promptly got in a long long line of stopped traffic. By this time there was no turning around, of course.

Eventually we merged traffic to where construction crews were practicing their lane-blocking skills for no apparent reason (Hey! What do you want to do today? I dunno, what do you want to do? How’s about we block some lanes on the turnpike today? Well, okay, but only if I get to drop the orange cones. You did it last time.)

It took us 1 hour 20 minutes to get to IKEA. Which meant we had 55 minutes to shop and get out of there, because we absolutely had to get trash bags on the way home.

Can we talk about the trash bags now?

I was always a trash-under-the-sink sort of girl. Hide the trash: who wants to see that??! Plus, it’s a repurposing of those ubiquitous plastic grocery bags that self-populate. So for, what, 20-some-odd years, that’s what I did. Easy. Invisible.

Until last year, when I was given a trash can as a gift. Interesting choice of gifts, eh? But out of respect to the giver, a made a place for the thing in my kitchen. After all, it didn’t look too bad, being shiny stainless steel, and it did hold more than the under-the-sink deal. Which meant I could consolidate my efforts and take trash out less often. I’m good with that. So in Colorado both methods peacefully co-existed; after all, how can you undo 20-some-odd years of under-the-sink habits?

But when we moved into our present domicile last August, kitchen space was at a premium. I decided to sacrifice the under-the-sink trash and make a spot for Mr. Stainless Steel.

Trash bags for this thing are available ONLY at one store, so far as I know. Which means I buy several packages at once. In Colorado, said store was 7 minutes away. Here, it’s about 40.

The last package of special bags kept dwindling. I knew I had a trip to make, yet avoided thinking about it. I started trying to conserve trash bag space, taking bulky items directly to the outside to-the-curb container.

However, my efforts were undermined last Thursday when the overly-eager babysitter decided to change the bag in my getting-full-but-still-had-space-in-the-bag trash container. And then left the full bag right in the kitchen, but that’s another story. So we had one bag left, the one that was being used. And I couldn’t stop the children from throwing things away.

So by yesterday morning it was overflowing.

IKEA went well. We bought me some new sheets! This was in lieu of buying a completely new bed ensemble in red that everyone lobbied toward, but I felt the expense was difficult to justify; after all, the existing one in green is perfectly serviceable. But I did like the red. So instead I bought sheets in an ocean blue color, which Nathaniel assured me would go perfectly with olive green.

And we got the round picture! And light bulbs for our lamps! And some colorful vases. And! A computer chair for me! And a little wooden man!

And by 11:20 we had the car loaded, had procured two cinnamon rolls the size of Eric’s head, and were ready to drive home, stopping on the way ever-so-briefly for trash bags.

Oh! Did I mention that none of this would have been possible had Eric been with us? No, I would have spent way too many precious minutes addressing his objections to various things:

Escalator! Nooooooo! I want to go up the staaaaiiiiirs! One step.at.a.time. By Myself. Don’t hold my hand!
Sitting in a shopping cart! Noooooooo! I want to walk! In every direction! I will twist my body to make it impossible to put my legs in the cart! I will hold my feet up! You can’t maaaaaake meeeee! I will cry now!!!
Noooooo! I want to see that thing there! That one! Thatonethatonethatone!! No, I won’t point! That would make it too easy! I will just object! Object! Object!

Objection overruled.

So. We’re in the car, going the trash bag way, because 1. We don’t want to be stuck in lane-blocking traffic again, and 2. the trash bags, duh.

Intent on 1. staying awake (2 hours sleep! yay!) and 2. getting home before Eric does, I drive right past the trash bag store. Nathaniel points it out to me as we pass it.

However, I am genetically unable to make u-turns, and we keep going. Must. Keep. Going. Cannot. Turn. Around. (That would be admitting defeat).

The overflowing trash taunts me when we get home.

However! We got a box and removed all the stuff that no longer “goes” in the living room (I will take that box to the basement soon, I promise), put light bulbs in our new lamps, and hung the Round Picture, and it looks pretty good. Even if Serena did complain about being everyone’s “servant”, as she was put into service fetching scissors, hammers, boxes, etc. It does look good. I’m looking at the Round Picture right now, above the fireplace. It didn’t hurt too much when it fell on my head before I nailed it to the wall. Soon I will remove the computer chair from the car, too.

So.

The Ex kindly was able to change his schedule after all for the weekend, which means I am definitely going to BlogHer. Which means today I am shopping for clothes to wear there, since apparently I have to wear something other than jeans and yoga pants. Damn.

But I am fulfilling the astrological reading I got a while back in my sleep patterns. Insanely tired at 11 pm last night, I went to sleep after a bit of reading, at midnight. Awoke before 2, wide awake. Sigh. Finished the book. 4 am ticks by. Meditation brings sleep, finally, but 8 am seems too early.

By the way? Apparently, regular trash bags can be made to fit Mr. Stainless Steel, so I have a reprieve.

And the shopping? I’ve had Three Cups Of Coffee, baby, and I’m READY!!

Today it’s cool and rainy, a gentle rain. Vancouver weather. But yesterday was warm and sunny though remarkably lacking in excessive oppressive humidity, and I took Eric for a long long walk while remaining in contact with Nathaniel and Serena via our new handy walkie-talkies, which we had tested in various scenarios to know just how far I could be away from the house comfortably. We know now that the walkie-talkies work, for instance, from a diner a mile or so away and from the fire station also, because we’ve on more than one occasion received surprising transmissions from random people at those locations. Nathaniel even had a lengthy conversation from some girl at the diner once. I heard him asking her if she played Runescape. That’s one way to find a girlfriend, I guess.

So it was nice and sunny, and I responsibly applied sunscreen to Eric before we left.

Last night when I went to bed the first time I didn’t notice anything unusual about myself in the mirror. Nor the second time, after some insomnia issues (hello? green tea in the evening? no thank you!), at 4-something am. Yet at 6-something am when I had to get up, there they were: the traces of the tank top I wore yesterday, standing out in sharp red relief to the pale skin that had been underneath it.

Nathaniel is excited about doing more around the house. [I know! How did this happen??! Simple: I made a list of the things I do and then told him he was free to choose items from the list, no pressure. Matthew is brill.] He chose to do the cat litter box. Well, hello! No problem there! This morning he was reluctant to apply peanut butter to a hot toasted bagel and promised to do the cat box instead. I will take a trade like that any day. Not holding my breath, though: breakfast is over and the cats are still desperately trying to cover stuff up in their box. Like scratching on the outside of the box will help.

So in three days I’m supposed to be going to Chicago for BlogHer. Except I’m having trouble getting too excited about it since I still don’t know what the children will be doing. Their dad is scheduled to work despite knowing for 2 months about my plans, and they’ve never stayed with anyone else and I’m not yet sure how I feel about the neighbor who watched them last Thursday while I was having so much fun at the courthouse. Plus! I found out that I am scheduled to appear at some events that require me to wear a dress! And heels! Neither of which I own. So I am in a mild I-need-to-shop panic, and it almost seems useless to shop for something I won’t wear again for a year until the next BlogHer event.

So…I’m trying to psych myself up for this. Ideas? Or is it my usual pre-new-situation jitters? Which as I recall I had before I went to Twin Oaks, and look what happened there?