Masquerading as a normal person day after day is exhausting

The early bird gets the... eye patch? Lesson on digestive cancers? Whatever it is, I'm not sure I want it.

By 7:45 this morning I had:

• Consumed roughly 3 cups of coffee. 

• Spent 90 minutes at the gym (30 on the elliptical, 60 being tortured by Maria). 

• Learned all about the difference between the anus and the rectum and how anal cancer differs from colo-rectal cancer. (And Maria wondered why that poor old lady left 15 minutes into this morning's class. Ha.) What did we ever do before we could Google on our Blackberries while holding a lunge for two minutes? We must have been ignorant fools, all of us. 

• Volunteered DH and his beer for a fundraiser.  

• Showered and sheveled myself.  

• Answered at least 17 questions, most of which involved tornadoes and proper pirate attire. (Why yes, she WAS reading a book on tornadoes [her love of natural disasters has not dimmed] and it IS pirate day at camp. Whyever do you ask?) 

• Designed and created a felt-and-yarn eye patch for Miss O. PSA: Using a hot glue gun at 7:30 AM after no breakfast, 90 minutes of gym, and 3 cups of coffee? NOT recommended.   

• Lifted the lid off the blender (while blending) to check on the status of the berry banana smoothie I was making.   

• Cleaned up the purple smoothie splatters all over the wall, the counter, and my face.  

 

Wordless Wednesday: Perhaps the best threat, ever

(all credit for photo goes to the awesome people 

at the Rock House hotel, where we had the two best meals of our trip)

I'm not sure that bandage is big enough, actually

Miss O scraped her ankle the other day while she and her friend A were playing outside. I took a quick peek, handed her a paper towel to staunch the (minimal) bleeding, and walked into the other room.

That's when I heard Miss O say to her friend, "Hey! Can you get me the tape? And some more paper towels?" Never a good sign...

Five minutes later, THIS is what emerged from the kitchen.

   

I think they have a very bright future in the medical field, no?

Brace Face

Friday was B-Day: Braces Day.

It's only been three days and already I'm not sure how I'm going to endure a whole year of "Hey, Mama, can I eat [insert random food item here] with my braces on?" I am half tempted to pre-empt the remaining eleventy billion questions and tell her she can eat only broccoli and smoothies until her braces come off.

In case you can't tell from the picture, she picked alternating pink and blue bands. In case you can't tell from my eyeroll, I'm less than thrilled by that choice. Alas, this is what happens when the orthodontist has the parent sit in the waiting room. They say it helps foster independence and ownership of her oral hygeine. I say it results in some Very Bad Decisions About Color Schemes.

So far she seems thrilled to have them. She's shown them off to everyone and has complained only slightly about sores.

It's funny how the braces change the whole shape of her face and the contours of her smile; I hadn't realized just how different she'd look. 

Wordless Wednesday: Every giraffe needs a pair (or two) of pimp shoes

Snorkel Dorks

I'm proud of Miss O; she gamely agreed to a snorkeling trip even though I suspect she might have been a little scared by the whole prospect.

She did an awesome job. We chartered a trip with one of the local dive shops, and yesterday afternoon we headed out on the boat with a bunch of people planning to dive. We were the only two Snorkel Dorks. :-)

   

The first stop was quite deep, and filled with amazing coral reefs. Some of them were so huge I could reach down and touch them from where I was, on the very top of the water.

Liv swam next to me, holding my hand. Every time she saw something exciting she squealed and pointed. The giant stingray at the bottom was pretty darn cool, as was the dolphin we saw diving next to our boat as we headed to the second spot.

This spot was incredibly shallow and we got an impressively close look at all kinds of neat stuff - coral, some sort of live crustaceans walking themselves and their homes across the ocean floor, and an amazing amount of fish. We swam through at least four schools of fish.

It was absolutely beautiful; I could have stayed there all day looking at that otherworldly space under the water. And now, of course, I have a yen to learn how to dive. Maybe next time...

Cartnapping!

To say that things are relaxed here would be a bit of an understatement. To illustrate just how "yeah, whatever" it really is, let me tell you about yesterday's adventure.

First, it's important to note that everyone leaves the key in the golf cart when it's parked. And that parking space? Can be just about anywhere. Fellow Pittsburghers will recognize how monumental it is to be able to park any place at any time. The absence of "No Parking on Every Third Wednesday When the Sun is Shining and Mars is in Retrograde" signs, the complete lack of plastic lawn chairs saving someone's space... it's stunning to a girl like me.

So, yesterday. Miss O and I rolled up to the marina in our sweet ride, parked it, and left the key in it, per usual. We went on our snorkeling adventure (another post), came back, ordered ourselves some pina coladas at the marina bar, then headed back to our cart.

Which was not there.

Pretty much every other cart on the isaland was there, but not ours. We went back into the dive center. "Uh, our cart seems to be gone..." The very nice woman called Michael's Cycles and explained to Michael that we'd had a cartnapping. "Oh, yeah, I saw it heading down Colebrook Street with three guys in it; I thought they must have been with Jennifer" he said. (Proving that this island is indeed small and everyone is in everyone else's business - our missing cart had already been spotted.) He said he'd go look for it and bring it back to the house.

Liv and I and our pina coladas set off on foot for the house. Not five minutes into our walk, we saw our cart coming down the road toward us. Behind the wheel was a boy who couldn't have been more than 15, a half empty bottle of Kalik beer in hand. "Dude, that's our cart." He looked bewildered. "It IS? I thought it was ours..." I assured him that it was ours - "See that little wind-up toy in the shelf? And the five gallons of sand and shells? This one is definitely ours." He apologized up and down, and then I asked if I could drop him off somewhere. He hopped in the back and we headed over to the marina. As we were halfway back, along came Michael in his own cart. While passing us he yelled over, "Oh good! You found him!" and then motored off like it was absolutely no big deal.

Which it really wasn't, I guess. I mean, the island is three miles long. There are only so many places a golf cart could be, y'know?

I still have a bug bite the size of Kansas on my elbow. But, at least there was sun today...

Man, I love a place where you can order a Goombay Smash (rum, more rum, and possibly a little bit of Goombay Punch), pop it in the cup holder of your golf cart, and motor back to your beach house. Of course, the speed lumps (as Miss O calls them) make it difficult to arrive with as much Goombay Smash as you left with, but some is definitely better than none. The suspension and shock absorbers in a golf cart? Nonexistent.

Today was actually sunny - I was beginning to fear that we'd spend the whole week without sun. We started the morning with coffee at Romora Bay, sitting on the patio overlooking the dock. Proof that Starbucks is taking over the world: this tiny island has a Starbucks in one of the resorts. God help you if you need a bank or a doctor, but you'll have no problem assuaging your caffeine fix...

We spent the rest of the morning at the beach. Olivia dug another hole that must have reached somewhere near China - it was so deep she could stand in it. You cannot even imagine the sand that I found inside her bathing suit when we came home...

I wanted conch salad for lunch today, but in true Bahamian fashion, the awesomest place was randomly closed today. "Queen Conch will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday" read the hand-scrawled note on the shack. I made do with a little peas 'n rice from another place, but I'm fully planning my Thursday lunch already.

After lunch we headed to the north end of the island to do a little horseback riding on the beach. You have never felt chafing til you've ridden a horse with a primitive saddle and scratchy blanket while your own legs were coated in sand. Owie. Since Miss O was too small to control her own horse, Robert had us ride together. Since the only thing holding her on that horse was me, I had to keep him from doing a full-out gallop down the beach because I feel sure that Miss O would have freaked right out. And probably with good reason... When we got back, we had perhaps the single most ungraceful dismount in the history of dismounts. I am NOT kidding. Clearly, she should have gotten off first, but she didn't and I tried (stupidly) to get off. I sort of slid in the sloooowest slow motion ever off the horse, taking her with me. Sweet Fancy Moses, the embarrassment. Luckily we landed in the soft sand, and the only thing bruised was my ego. I'm sure Robert and the rest of the people on the beach will be laughing about that for a while. *sigh*

More beach in the late afternoon, then a so-so dinner at another place on the bay side of the island. The best part of the dinner was listening to the group of women behind us. They were, no kidding, like Blair Waldorf All Grown Up. At least one of them owns a house on the island and they've been coming here for forever (they were not much older than me) and they were just so... I dunno. Entitled? Condescending? Whatever it was, it was fascinating. Could not stop listening.

We took a little post-prandial stroll on the part that Miss O calls Shell Beach (there are basically no shells on the beach side of the island, but you can find some on the bay side), then I convinced her to head over to Romora Bay for sunset. The sun sinks amazingly fast - who knew it could move that quickly? Miss O tormented the resident macaw, I ordered us milk (Miss O) and Goombay Smash (me) to go, and we headed home for checkers on the front porch. How 1950s of us (well, minus the rum drink, I guess).

Random aside: I have to confess that it's completely disconcerting to go through life never knowing what time it is. There are no clocks anywhere that I've seen, and since I don't have cell service, I don't carry my Blackberry with me. I never know what time it is; this is in stark contrast to Regular Life, when I know exactly what time it is (to the minute) all day, every day. Truthfully, it's making me twitch just a little bit. Need to stifle that Inner OCD with a little more rum, perhaps...

Here comes the rain again

Apparently Harbour Island is getting more rain than they've had since 1988. How lucky is THAT, I ask you?

When you drive a golf cart in the rain, you will get wet. More specifically, your butt will get wet and you will walk around looking for all the world like you peed yourself.

When you drive a golf cart too close to some shrubbery that's been rained on, you'll get even wetter. Miss O thought my brush with the bush was about the funniest thing ever, mostly because she was on the other side of the cart and thus not wet.

Despite the rain we've been to the beach several times already. It may not be sunny, but the water is still relatively warm and the beach is gorgeous. Also? Desserted. We've seen maybe five other people on the beach since yesterday.

Miss O insisted on going swimming after dinner last night, so I indulged her. There we were, at 8:00 at night, splashing in the waves. She was SO happy, which made me happy. Today she entertained herself for an hour digging a giant hole in the sand. This thing could swallow a small dog which, come to think of it, is sort of what she looked like while digging it: on all fours flinging sand behind her with hands and feet. Even after a shower, there is still sand in her hair. Texturizer, right?

There are roosters and chickens roaming freely on the island, and we seem to have a little Chicken Commune going on in our backyard. There are several chickens, one rooster, and a heck of a lot of chicks. The rooster lived up to the rooster stereotype and woke us up at dawn, for which I kindly thank him. So very tired.

Also quite hungry, and looking forward to a froofy rum drink and some good conch for dinner tonight.

[brief pause for dinner and drink]

One frozen Goombay Smash later, and I'm quite, uh, liquored up. We ate dinner at Romora Bay, on a little covered deck that overlooks the harbor and claims to be the best place to see the sunset on the island. It was absolutely beautiful there - exactly what you'd imagine. The tables overlook the bay, where all the yachts are docked. The sun was setting (albeit in a fairly cloudy sky), and the water was tranquil. The drinks were full of rum and the menu was full of conch. Overhearing everyone's conversations was quite entertaining, as well. There was the stereotypical family (three generations, natch) who'd sailed down from the states, and wandered up to the restaurant sunburnt and barefoot and wearing shorts with crustaceans embroidered on them. There were random couples from North Carolina who, in a rum haze, told each other about miscarriages, snooty wine clubs, and the best Carolina barbeque. There was Goldie the parrot, who had quite the potty mouth...

Olivia is passed out in bed, and I'm going to sit out on the front porch with a vodka tonic. This island has many lovely liquor stores that carry Grey Goose at a most reasonable price. Kind of makes up for having to pay 7.49 for four rolls of single-ply toilet paper. I will have to post a picture of what, exactly, 82 dollars will buy you at the local Piggly Wiggly. It's appalling.

Things I know, Sunday Edition

[posted on Monday because it took this long to find a wireless connection]

Things I learned today:

1. Miss O does not like Goombay Punch. Weird kid. Have you ever had it? It's deliciously gross and for years I just assumed it must be red because TASTED red, y'know? Talk about some serious cognitive dissonance the first time I poured it out of a can and into a glass and beheld its completely-not-from-nature yellow hue. Anyway, she took one sip, proclaimed it awesome, then took another and asked if I wanted the rest. Score.

2. The Nassau airport is about the pittiest pit you can imagine. Luckily, we had a three-hour layover there. Wheeefun.

3. Getting up at 4:30 am (aside: the birds are quite awake and noisy then. who knew?) and taking three planes, two taxis, and one ferry makes for one hell of a long day.

4. In case you ever wondered, peanut butter DOES count as a gel and cannot be carried onboard...

5. ...unless you are in the Bahamas, where you can apparently carry on anything. Screening consists of the old school "run your bags thru the x-ray" technique. Miss O was baffled. "But mama, why aren't we taking off our shoes?" I walked through fully clothed and shod and carrying a -- brace yourselves -- BOTTLE OF WATER. It was more than 3 ounces, and it was most definitely NOT in a quart-sized Ziploc.

Thursday Thirteen: Good Stuff

1.  Miss O and I leave for vacation in a mere three days!

2. Today is my last day of work until June 15th. While I know the re-entry is going to suck (hello, thousands of email messages in my inbox), it was with no small amount of glee that I enabled my Out of Office notification today. Wheeeee!

3. It's Cleaning Lady Day, which means my house will not be a sty for at least the next 24 hours. Is there anything better than walking into a completely clean kitchen and knowing you didn't have to clean it yourself? Aaaahhh. Honestly, the older I get, the more compulsive I get about neatness and cleanliness.  I was a first-class slob until after grad school, and now I can't stand it when things are messy or dirty. Yeah, freakish, I know.

4. I have a container of Crack Balls (otherwise known as TJ's sea salt and turbinado sugar dark chocolate almonds) in my office. My undying gratitude to Karen for getting us all hooked on them.

5. The bank straightened out the traveler's cheque business (though in the interest of full disclosure, not without a lot more stupidity).

6. My Awesome Sister wrangled a pair of tickets to tonight's hockey game, despite living nowhere near Pittsburgh. DH is thrilled, and I'm glad he gets to go. For free, even!

7. The no-sew tutu I made for my niece's birthday (spawn of Awesome Sister) turned out better than I'd hoped, and fit her perfectly. By all reports, it was a big hit. Yay. Good lord, was there a lot of tulle in my house for a while, though. That thing? Was puffy.

8.  I love the Land's End swimsuit I ordered. It was on sale, AND it fits (and flatters). How often does THAT happen?

9. I have the entire first season of Gilmore Girls on DVD, ready to go to the beach with me. Oh, how I love me some trashy brain candy television...

10. Tonight is my favorite ass-kicking class at the gym. It's being taught by a new instructor, one who trained under Maria (she of House of Pain infamy), so I have hopes it will be even better now. Last week it was taught by a sub and it was way too easy. My motto is "If I don't hurt when I leave, it's not worth it."

11. I inched the MPG on the Honda a little higher this week. So what, you say? Dude, that thing is my nemisis. I am OBSESSED with what my calculated MPG is and am always trying to make it go higher. When I excitedly told DH, he  looked at me with a great deal of pity in his eyes.  But you know what? I'm still excited. :-) 

12.  I have a glut of good books I'm waiting to dive into.

13. Before the weekend is over, fruity rummy drinks will be in my hand, which will be attached to my body, which will be in a chair on the beach of a small little island in the Bahamas! (Oh, wait. Did I mention that already? Sorry.)

DUH.

I hate when people are stupid. I hate it even more when their stupidity makes my life more difficult.

Yes, dear teller at PNC Bank, I'm looking at you.

Even I, a lowly non-banking peon, know that I cannot possibly cash a traveler's cheque that's been signed once by my husband without him being there to sign it again. 

In the words of fourth graders everywhere: Um, duh.

So WHY did you insist I could? Even when my husband told you he was not traveling with us and would not be able to countersign them, you assured him it wouldn't be a problem. "Your wife can take this to any bank and sign it and they will cash it."

The kind man at American Express confirmed my suspicions this morning. Once he wrapped his head around the ridiculousness of the situation, he carefully and diplomatically said in his crisp accent, "Ma'am, you will maybe have some difficulty cashing those."

So, dear PNC Bank teller, thank you for adding yet another errand on a list that was already far too long. My husband will be back tomorrow with those useless signed cheques and you will be doing what you should have done in the first place. And if you still insist you are right, that kind man at American Express asks that you please call him so he can set you straight. 

We have seriously curtailed the hair parties around here

For the last several years, Miss O has kept her hair long. She liked it that way, and she had enough length to make the required ballet-class bun easy.  

Unfortunately for all living in this house, Miss O has the kind of slightly curly (yet fine) hair that just breeds tangles. I'd say a good 90% of the time she wandered around looking like some sort of ungroomed orphan. Very attractive, let me tell you. I'm positive her teachers and the rest of the world wondered why her parents just didn't brush her hair, already.

But brush we did.

We'd brush her hair (and endure the whining and tears) before bed, and she'd wake up in the morning with the scariest, wildest hair you've ever seen. That hair? Had been doing some serious partying overnight. I'm pretty sure the police were called in more than once to break up fights.

Trying to brush out that mess every morning before school was a horror show. And even if I put in some braids before she left, she'd come home at 3:30 looking for all the world like a girl who hadn't brushed her hair since last Christmas. I don't know how she did it, but man... that was some badass hair she had going on (and not in a good way).

Two weeks ago, I convinced her to get it cut. Short. She sat in Tom's chair at Capristo and said, very precisely, "I'd like a bob, please, that is shorter in the back and then a little longer in the front." Tom, who has known her since she was in utero and has been listening to me complain about her hair for the last seven years, was only too happy to oblige. Forty minutes and a lot of hair later, she was done.

She loved it so much she sat there for the next two hours (I was getting my hair cut and colored) staring at herself in the mirror. Ah, such modesty...

Can I tell you how much I love it? There have been no more hair parties around here (well, maybe a low-key little wine and cheese soiree one night when she went to bed with damp hair) and it takes THREE SECONDS to brush it. 

Someone please tell me why it took us so long to do this?!

Wordless Wednesday: I didn't know this needed to be said. Ever.

In which I out myself as a forgetful narcissist

I've sort of lost my journaling (and blogging) mojo. Not sure what happened, but I'd really like to get it back. A conversation with Miss O this weekend reminded me exactly why I need to write things down: My memory sucks.

"Mom, what kinds of funny things did I used to say when I was little?" (Note that she is all of 7 right now.)

I rattled off a few (pronouncing birds "boids" and calling her backpack a "packpack" and, of course, the oft-repeated-by-me "shranky") but then stopped. I couldn't remember anything else. "You're in luck," I told her. "I"ve written all this stuff down in my journal, so we just need to read through that." She was ecstatic and wanted to go find those entries right then.

There have been so many times over the last few months when DH has mentioned some bit of (fairly recent) history that I've completely forgotten. I've even forgotten those important kid milestones, like when Miss O got her teeth and how old she was when we took various trips and what her first word was. Is it normal to be this forgetful? If it isn't, I'm not sure I want to know. (And if you tell me, I'll probably forget, anyway.)

Although I have no idea what prompted me to start journaling in the first place, I am so very glad I did. As I write blog posts or LiveJournal entries, I'm mostly just doing a brain dump of sorts - daily life, or an anecdote about the kid. These are things that are, I know, not really interesting to many people. Yet this weekend's conversation with Miss O reminded me of why I need to keep journaling. I want to be able to remember her childhood, to answer her questions and, maybe when she's older, to help her understand the person I am (or was). 

I suspect that for many in my generation, our parents are complete mysteries. Sure, we know what they watched on TV and what they liked to eat for dinner and -- thanks to the magic of Polaroid -- what that favorite pair of purple and black plaid pants really looked like, but how many of us know what our parents thought about on a daily basis? The stuff they found funny or absurd or sad? All those small experiences, accomplishments, and setbacks that individually aren't much but which, when taken together, actually make up a person's core? 

People complain about the rise of narcissim due to social media - we like to talk about ourselves endlessly even though no one really cares. Maybe that's not such a bad thing. Maybe one day those narcissistic natterings will help our kids understand who we were and what their early lives were really like, without that gauzy filter of unreliable memories. 

Just think! They'll no longer have to wonder just why, exactly, Aunt Sally doesn't speak to Grandma any more or why weird Cousin Timmy lived at home until he was 49. No more will they have to feel like the worst parents ever when they hear us revise history and say "Oh, honey, I don't know why this is so hard for you. YOU never cried at night AND you were magically potty trained in a day when you were only 6 months old!" 

They'll know it all, for better or for worse. Is that good? I don't know. And as a narcissist, of course, I don't really care.

Things that rock: my kid, and Soba

Miss O rocked her first set of standardized tests. We got the scores last week and I was very proud of her. Actually, I was proud of the entire second grade - their scores put them at a 6th-grade equivalency level across the board. That? Astounds me. 

Honestly, I wasn't sure what to expect from her scores. I know she's a smart kid, but I also know that she's an anxious kid and a bit of a dawdler. A few weeks before the tests her teacher approached me. "I'm a little worried about Miss O' - she seems nervous about the tests, and she also has a hard time doing her work quickly." Definitely not a good combination for a timed standardized test...

I talked up the whole testing thing for the next week or two, which was completely easy to do because I was a total nerd and  LOVED standardized tests when I was in school - it wasn't until the GREs that I started twitching at the thought of filling in little ovals with a #2 pencil. At the same time, her teacher talked them up, too, offering a bit of SWAG to sweeten the deal. "Mama! Ms. S. said we get our own water botttles during the tests! AND we get special snacks during the tests!"

The first day of the testing her own little Inner Nerd shone through. "Mama, I am so excited about the tests I could just SCREAM!" she squee'ed on her way out the door. 

That's my girl. :-)

We have a tradition in our house: when Miss O gets good grades, she gets to pick a place to have dinner. Sometimes that backfires and we end up eating at Max & Erma's, but lately she's been on a  Soba kick. How much do I love that kid?  Mama gets a lovely cocktail and lobster maki while the kid gets her beloved avocado maki and spicy cucumber salad. Win-win, that situation.

Also, how much do I love the servers at Soba? We didn't have our usual one (Bob), but he stopped by the table and asked whether Miss O got good grades again and then made her blush when he thanked her for coming to see him. Our actual server saw us toasting Miss O, asked what we were celebrating, then brought her dessert out with a candle in it to congratulate her. Those two small touches were very much appreciated, and I sent off a quick note to Soba to let them know. Yo, other Pittsburgh restaurants: you might want to take note. Have your servers treat guests nicely, and your guests will return again and again. Simple equation, but altogether too elusive for so many places in this city.  

Mile 21

P-Street is smack at Mile 21 in the Pittsburgh Marathon. Our friend and neighbor was running his first-ever marathon yesterday, so the whole street turned out to cheer him on.

A few things I learned from my first marathon viewing experience:

• It is extremely handy to have a friend who will set up two lovely lawn tents at the end of the street to keep us all dry.

• Those tents? Will negate the need for Tom's kiddie-swimming-pool-as-family-umbrella idea.

• Even with seven kids and a husband running the marathon, Lisa will make scones and cookies and coffee for everyone.

• People will run in the weirdest stuff. Some woman had a tulle skirt and plastic leis around her neck - OMG, the chafing.

• If you run the marathon while juggling five balls, you will come in almost dead last.

• Men use band-aids on their chests for a real reason. The one dude who didn't ran by with a bloody shirt and it was all kinds of horrifying.

• Only one person vomited at Mile 21.  Personally, I thought it would have been more, but maybe I'm just a wimp. (Actually, I would have lost it somewhere around mile 3...)

The kids all stood on the curb and held out their hands as the runners passed; I was touched and surprised by how many of them actually (literally!) ran out of their way to come over and slap hands and thank the kids for coming out. 

I was also surprised by how fun it was to stand and watch a bunch of people (many of them looking near death) run a crazy long distance in the rain. File this as another entry under "Things I never thought I'd do and enjoy."

 

All the P-Street kids lined up during a lull in the action. Photo thanks to my awesome friend Karen, who was the only one smart enough to bring a camera.

School's out for summer

Today was the last day of class. Kind of bittersweet, really.  

After some bagels and a few closing slides, I passed out a survey asking the students to assess the usefulness of the assignments. 

Yes, that IS a My Little Pony pencil - as you can imagine, the competition for that one was fierce. Everyone else had to settle for Santa, spiders, basketballs, and Dracula. (sigh. THIS is what happens when you live in a house with a seven-year old, and when every class party has at least one novelty pencil favor. I went searching for regular yellow pencils this morning but was completely shut down. Seasonal and novelty pencils it was, then!)

So yeah. Bittersweet.

I am quite relieved to have oodles of time back; I've sorely missed having at least one day out of seven where I had nothing with an imminent -- or even past due -- deadline staring me in the face.

But I will miss it. So many of the students were fabulous: genuinely interested and excited, and able to make noticible progress in their work over the course of the semester. And I have learned so much in the process. Teaching this class took everything I do all day long, crammed it in a blender, and pressed Liquify. I've developed a completely new and much broader (more fluid? stop groaning...)  way of looking at my field and my own place in it.

Now, to hope they ask me to teach it again next semester...

In which I just make sure her hair is all pretty and her bow is tied

As you all no doubt know by now, DH is the Catholic one in this family. Therefore, the particulars of Miss O's first communion? Were left completely up to him, and also to the kind people at Carlow who prepared all the kids for their sacrements this year without any effort on the part of the parents. 

So this Saturday found me flat-ironing Miss O's unruly hair and tying a big old butt bow on the back of her very tasteful Strasburg dupioni silk dress  (omg, the craziness; I'm pretty sure I made my first communion in a peach-and-brown dress with a sleeveless vest thingie that went over it for extra fashion points, reinforced-toe pantyhose, and brown wooden sandals to show off those pantyhose toes).

The kid can really clean up when she tries.

We all (barely) survived the mass in the eleventy-billion-degree chapel;  Miss O did her bit without dropping the Large Cup (and it really was large) and without spilling or tripping. Always a bonus.

After, we took the grandparents and the godparents to lunch at Mallorca. Oh, how I love their sangria - yum.   We capped the day with an unexpected but completely lovely barbecue at M&T's house (two of Miss O's godparents).

    

You're out!

I knew Miss O was outside playing this afternoon, per usual. Also per usual, she was running around in the next door neighbor's back yard with the gaggle of boys who live there  - we put a gate in between our yards so they could entertain each other with minimal parental effort.

Being the ever-involved mother that I am, I paid no mind to the kids as I sat in the kitchen working on tomorrow's lecture.

Until, that is, the phone rang. It was a friend, calling to see if Miss O wanted to come down to play.

J: We've got the zip line and the sprinkler going. Does Miss O want to come down?

Me: Uh, she's out in the back with the boys, doing something... [At that point, I turned and looked out the window. And started laughing hysterically.]  Actually, I think she's playing 7th Grade Gym Class. 

J: Um...

Me: The boys are hurling balls at her while she runs back and forth along the fence. It's kinda like dodgeball gone all kinds of wrong. She's giggling, so I'm guessing she's having fun.

Dude.  When did kids start playing dodgeball FOR FUN? I vividly recall it as more torture device than awesome game and am pretty sure you couldn't pay me enough money to play it ever again. Not after that traumatic incident in middle school, anyway. *twitch*

Does this orange jumpsuit make my feathers look fat?

The Incident of the Rooster and the Chicken is a mystery no more.

That runaway poultry? Totally got busted. (Probably for loitering.)

Subject: Rooster and Chicken are Accounted For

(1) Firstly, I called Police about the incident and they did not know of the Animal Control acquiring the rooster and chicken. 

(2) Secondly, is that a fee totaling 176 dollars per animal is charged.  That includes the court fee, the fine and something else.  There is also the charge from the animal rescue league, of each day the animal is there.

I feel kinda sad that the Incident is all over and done with (I was having way too much fun imagining their fate), yet there's something very amusing about the resolution. Somehow, the thought of them getting picked up by Animal Control never crossed my mind.

And yet there they sit, in the animal slammer, waiting for the owner to pony up almost four hundred dollars in fees.  For runaway poultry. He'd better hurry - I hear those chicken gangs on the inside are especially peckish.

(Inappropriate aside: the Rooster and Chicken Get Eaten scenario? Would have been MUCH cheaper.)

The Incident of the Rooster and Chicken

This note to our neighborhood mailing list made my day.

Who says a Monday-morning inbox has to be all doom and gloom? Sometimes it can make a person giggle like an idiot. And not just once, either. Seriously, I read this note about ten times and have giggled every. single. time. I am JUST that mature, you all.

A couple of days ago, 1 Rooster and 1 chicken I has been missing. That address is 123 Y Street. If by some odd happening you just recently have heard a neighbor having a crowing chicken, please inform the police. Or, if you happened upon them and are making them of a pet, please return them to 123 Y Street where they belong.

And of the worse case scenario, if you have knowledge of an Incident of the Rooster and Chicken, please inform the police. And yes, they did have their feathers.

Yes, I DO live in a highly populated urban environment, and no, I did not know I had a chicken and a rooster for a neighbor. It is, apparently, the quietest rooster, ever.

I've been having a great time imagining the possibilities for the Incident of the Rooster and Chicken. There are so many to choose, ranging from the absurdly amusing to the darkly macabre. Did they plot and plan and finally make a break for it, a la Chicken Run? Maybe they wandered off by accident and are trying to survive the harsh Highland Park elements on a Homeward Bound sort of journey.  Did someone  fowl-nap them out of some desperate and sad desire to have a beaked and feathered pet of his or her own? Perhaps they just plain old got eaten, either by a dog or a fellow (hungry) neighbor.  Around here, there's no telling which it might be...

Reply hazy. Try again.

Because everything we had in our own childhoods (Little Miss Chatterbox and moon shoes, anyone?) is cool again, it should come as no surprise that Miss O owns a Magic 8 Ball.

That thing? Is trouble.

Sunday night she came clattering into the dining room all in a tizzy. "I think I broke my nose!"

A quick poking and prodding yielded a sizable lump. "What happened?"

"The Magic 8 Ball fell on my nooooooose!" she wailed.

First of all, how the HELL does that even happen? Second, how do you NOT laugh at that? It's so incredibly ridiculous.

A while later I heard Miss O in her room asking the Magic 8 Ball, "Did you break my nose?" *shake shake shake* "Oh,  'my sources say no.'  *pause* Are you SURE you didn't break my nose?!"

Yeah. As if the Magic 8 Ball was going to cop to that...

All that's missing is a little Rockford Files action. Or maybe some Shaun Cassidy.

The 1970s? They are alive and well, and hanging out in my backyard. In moon shoes, no less.

 

Mutiny

Miss O's class put on a French play - Le Petit Chaperon Rouge. Because she was playing Little Red Riding Hood and because she's seven and still likes her mommy, she begged me to come and watch.

I rearranged the schedule to make it work. Frankly, 10:00 on a weekday morning is a teensy bit inconvenient but, y'know, she's my kid and it was important to her and it's all about priorities in life, yadda yadda yadda.

As the parents coagulated around the room at the designated time, we noticed a sign. "French play for 2A at 10:40 am."

TEN FORTY?

What. The. Hell.

We had two emails and a sent-home note that clearly said the play was at 10 AM.

Let me tell you, you have never heard Disgruntled and Annoyed and Whiny until you've forced a group of parents to duck out of meetings and busy schedules in the middle of the morning, forced them to find child care for younger siblings, and THEN tell them that WHOOPS, THE TIME IS WRONG and they have to mill about for forty minutes until the play actually starts.

One of us grumbled that since we had a quorum, we should totally storm in and make them do the play right then. Everyone else agreed. Apparently that stairwell? Is bugged. Not two minutes later, the school director came to tell us that they would be doing a special early performance for us, as well as a second performance at 10:40 for those parents who had already stormed off to try to be productive for 40 minutes.

Ah, the sweet victory of parent mutiny.

And, most importantly, Miss O did fabulously as le petit chaperon rouge, even if she was a tiny bit nervous at first. In fact, I was hugely impressed by ALL the second graders.

Bizarro World

Remember that episode of Seinfeld, the one where everything is completely opposite of normal?

Well, I'm pretty sure I'm living in Bizarro Pittsburgh right now.

Dude. What is that bright orange thing, and what's it doing here for five days in a row? Has that ever happened before?!

It's always about the food in this house

Yesterday's spelling test came home in the backpack. Miss O had been asked to spell moose.

Her answer?

Mousse.

Proving that children are indeed stunningly shaped by their environment, Miss O didn't even contemplate that there was another sort moose. Nope. Her mind went right for the fancy French confection, thankyouverymuch. And, amazingly, she spelled it correctly.

It's all about priorities in this house, people. Who cares about antlered animals when there's dessert to be had?

In which I ask, "WHY?!"

I've come across two things in the last day that have just left me asking "WHY for the love of all that is sweet and good..." My eyebrows, they might still be up near my scalp.

Thing the first: Poop candy
As I was perusing the CDC's giant OMG Don't Eat These Items Because They Might Have Salmonella list, I noticed something... odd.

There are apparently large numbers of people who satisfy their sugar fixes with a bit of scatalogical sweetness.  Seriously, if there is an animal who poops it, there is a candy made to resemble it. Witness all the forms of poop-related candy just on that recall list:

Bear Poop
Bear Scat
Chicken Coop Poop
Cow Patties
Cow Pies
Deer Droppings
Moose Droppings
Osprey Poop
Prairie Dog Pebbles

Now, I know you're just dying to bust into some of those Prairie Dog Pebbles, but try to hold yourself back. You wouldn't want to accidentally ingest some salmonella with that scat...

Thing the second: Pigs who wear boots and hair extensions
Every now and then I take a peek at my blog stats, mostly to see what search terms bring people here. In case you wondered, there are an awful lot of people googling "snow globe cupcakes" and "oreos on cupcakes" and "owl cupcakes."

There is also at least one person who googled for an image of  "PIG WITH BOOTS AND HAIR EXTENSIONS" and was rewarded with this  picture of my mighty fine turkey cupcake:

Now, I don't know what's more disturbing: That there IS a picture of a pig wearing boots and hair extensions, that someone wanted to FIND it, or that Google equated that with my innocent little turkey cupcake.

No one here but us chicks

DH spent the weekend peering into Evgeni Malkin's locker (report: a pair of shoes and a Russian magazine that looked suspiciously like Cosmo) and doing other manly hockey things at the Pens Fantasy Camp.

Miss O and I, on the other hand,  took advantage of the opportunity for a relaxing girlie sort of weekend.

We watched some bad TV (thank you, SuperNanny, for serving as such an effective parenting tool - "If you ever acted like that, you wouldn't see the outside of our house for about 4 years...") and lazed around in our pajamas.

We fixed my Target Withdrawal (no trip since December!) with a nice long trip, most of which was spent in the Valentine candy aisles.  While there, she bought us both decaf nonfat nowhip peppermint mochas with her Starbucks gift card from Grammie and Papu. God love the genius who thought of putting a Starbucks INSIDE the Target.

We also entertained. Mandy and her daughters came over for dinner and wine on Friday night - we don't see nearly enough of them and I loved the chance to just chat.

Alison came for a sleepover on Saturday night and -- are you ready for this? -- I had them asleep by 9:30. As Miss O ages, I will sorely miss the ability to hyperbolize and spin things in my favor. "You can stay up all the way 'til 9:30 - that's a whole hour after your bedtime."  

Of course, there WAS the Great Glitter Incident of 2009 during the sleepover. It is, I admit, mostly my fault. I knew I should have been suspicious of the quiet. I could have stopped working on my lecture notes and gone to investigate. But I didn't, and the contents of a tube of nail glitter (OMG, WHY does such a thing exist?!) ended up all over the girls and the bathroom. And my socks, when I walked into said bathroom.  All three of us were sparklier than any human being has a right to be.

Five loads of laundry (and about 8 extra rinse cycles) later and I think we've gotten rid of most of it. I did catch a green sparkly flash in Miss O's part this morning, though. Man, I hate glitter.

To ease the horror, I suggested we cap off the girlie weekend with dinner out. "Where do you want to eat?" I asked Miss O. She didn't even miss a beat. "Soba," she said, definitively. She's a big fan of their avocado maki and the chocolate sushi dessert and regularly picks it as her Good Report Card destination. The kid, she has some expensive tastes...

When I made the reservation I asked to be seated with our favorite server (Bob). Love that dude. Not only is he good at his job, but he apparently has a knack for remembering people. When we sat down last night, he immediately recognized us and said to Miss O, "Hey! Did you get good grades again? Is that why you're back to see me?" She was beyond thrilled that he not only remembered her, but knew she came there last time because of her report card. He also earned serious points with her by telling her to whack the heck out of the chocolate caramel bombe we shared for dessert. "But mom, he TOLD me to really whack it hard with my fork! *whack whack thwack*" What kid doesn't love being told to smack the crap outta their food?

And now it's back to the reality of Monday. There oughtta be a law making Mondays illegal. Especially after a Sobapolitan the night before.

I didn't think we'd have that discussion for at least another 12 years

"Mom, Jackson says he wants to marry me. But I don't want to get married so I'm just going to live with him. AND we're going to adopt eight kids: four from Italy and four from the United States. Does that sound like a good idea?"

I just nodded and stifled my giggles because really, what else can you do?

Unexpectedly childless for an evening

We knew that Miss O was going to have a playdate with her friend B on Saturday. What we didn't know is that B's mom wanted to keep her for hours and hours and hours.

"Can I just take her after ice skating [so, noonish] and bring her home around 8:30?"

We couldn't blurt out YES! fast enough.

So while she had a grand time playing with her friend ("mom, she had, like, A HUNDRED American Girl dolls. And her OWN bathroom! And waffle fries!") we took ourselves out to a nice dinner.

We'd been wanting to try Toast! Wine Bar & Kitchen, which recently took over the space where the awesome Baum Vivant used to be.

(Aside: how's that for an Official Pittsburgh Direction? You know what I'm talking about -- "Turn right,  where the XYZ  used to be..." )

It did not disappoint. Lots of interesting cocktails and an extensive list of by-the-glass wines, including a Torrontes that I loved. New mission: finding it in the archaic Pennsylvania state store morass.

My beet salad was perfect, and I kept trying to think of ways to distract DH so I could steal his sweet onion bisque. 

We sat in one of the small little rooms upstairs and managed to lower the average age of diners by, oh, twenty years or so.  Of course, we DID eat at the AARP-approved hour of 5:30 (thanks to my 7:30 book group meeting), so we sort of  brought that on ourselves. ;-) 

After the crazy few months we've had -- holidays, new jobs, extra jobs -- it was so nice to be able to sit and talk over lovely food and wine. And even nicer? Not having to pay a babysitter. Sweet.

Sign me up for the circus

I am becoming a master juggler. Not that I wasn't good before - you have to be able to juggle if you've got a kid and a job - but this is at a whole new level. Like, the scary-flaming-objects kind of level.

For the last seven years, we've been incredibly lucky: both of us had a lot of flexibility in our jobs and that made managing all the day-to-day stuff a bit easier.

If Miss O was sick or had a snow day, at least one of us was able to work from home while she vegged on the couch or entertained herself.  If she had a two-hour delay, it wasn't a big deal to walk her to the bus stop at 9:20 instead of the usual yawn-inducing 7:20. Making dinner and getting it on the table before 6:15 wasn't an act of daring and skill and didn't require sacrificial offerings.

But last month all that flexibility came to a quick and painful stop.

• DH took a new (and better) job that requires him to be in the office from 8am til past 5pm. With NO vacation at all the first year. Most nights he gets home after 6:30.

• I started teaching at CMU two mornings a week. This is in addition to my regular crazy job.

• I volunteered for something at work (I know, I know) and ended up getting in way over my head. It's literally me and five executives forming a core team to drive a pretty large project. (When I realized that they'd stuck me on the core team I frantically emailed my mentor: OMG, it's me and five executives and I think I'm going to freak out and I have no idea what I'm doing.) This, too, is on top of all my regular workload, and involves lots of late-afternoon meetings.

Now I'm the person who is praying that her daughter's school doesn't have a delay because sweet fancy moses, what am I going to do with the kid? She may well be going to grad school at the ripe old age of seven if that delay happens on a Monday or Wednesday.

Now I'm the person who is solely responsible for getting Miss O from the bus and to her ballet and Brownie meetings. I'm the one who supervises homework and gets snack and answers the 924 questions she comes home with.

Now I'm the person who has to make dinner every night because DH isn't home until well after 6.

Now we're the family who eats dinner at 7:00 and then barely has time for homework and bath before bed. 

And I'm not complaining - really, I'm not. I'm just overwhelmed, and trying to figure out how to get everything done.

On the one hand, I thrive on stress and chaos and am so happy to be teaching this class and having this exposure to other parts of my company that I don't mind working 14-hour days. On the other hand, well... I feel like it's such a delicate balance and one small thing (a Super Bowl delay, an illness, an unexpected work meeting) will cause everything to come crashing down in spectacular fashion.

I think I need a personal assistant. Anyone interested? Comes with all the coffee you can drink...

A bit less of the -less

Miss O just handed me her weekly spelling test.   Among the usual words I found this string, all one right after the other:

homeless
jobless
useless
endless

Does that list not make you want to leap off a bridge?

I'm totally suggesting she give depressed and downtrodden as the challenge words next week.  'Cause if that's how the kids are gonna feel, they might as well know how to spell it...

We got the beat

It's important to be fully dressed and accessorized before rocking out, you all.

She'd just come home from an ice-skating party and dressed herself in what might appear to be a random assortment of items (cute knit skirt, Little Ms. Chatterbox tee, sparkly crocheted cardi, and her skating headband) but was actually a carefully cultivated fashion statement.

I apologize for the heinously shadowy picture, but I had only one chance -- the second I clicked, she protested. "Moooom, you're DISTRACTING me by taking that picture and now I LOST THE BEAT."

A picture from meme to you

To say it has been a crazy week (I have wildly over committed myself yet again) would be accurate. I haven't stopped going in some capacity or another since last weekend.

The first thing to fall victim to my stress and overwhelm was sleep. The things that run through my head at 1:35, 3:27, and 5:08 am are amazingly diverse. And also completely unnecessary to think about before the sun even rises.

The second thing was blogging.  And honestly, I wouldn't be blogging right now except for the fact that both StylishBoots and Stinky tagged me for the  sixth-picture-in-the-sixth-folder meme. And because I really needed to do something other than work or lecture prep, I took a break to do a little meme-age.

So, like all good memes, this one has rules. Here they are:

1. Go to your picture files
2. Go to your 6th folder.
3. Go to your 6th picture.
4. Tell us about it.
5. Tag 6 friends to do the same.

The sixth folder is called ChristmasCards_Round2_2007, and the sixth picture is one I never even looked at twice because, dude? Miss O's tonsils do not a good holiday card make.

It was still in its original sideways, underexposed form, which I handily rotated and cleaned up for your viewing pleasure.

I took this in early December of 2007, in our backyard. I was attempting to get a good shot of Miss O for our holiday card.  I tried everything I could to make her smile because it was stupid cold outside and already dark and she was starting into her phase of not liking the camera. I wish I could remember what I said to produce this laugh. It was as likely to be something having to do with bodily functions (you all, even girls find farts funny)  as it was a corny joke.

And now on to the final rule: I tag Red Pen Mama, Karen (yes, you, Karen B.),  Kim Z,  ClumberKim, and Kellie.

And this is why I love Pittsburgh

The forecast for tonight involves a few inches of snow.

In this city, any mention of the S-word means an immediate run to the Iggle for vast quantities of toilet paper, bread, and milk. Why those three things? No clue. But dude, whenever there's the possibility of snow, you'd best not be wanting to wipe your butt, have a sandwich, or eat a bowl of cereal for the next 48 hours because there is nowaynohow you are getting any of those items, thanks to the snow vultures.

As luck would have it, I needed to go to the store today to --  as these two  lovely ladies  so aptly put it -- buy my Regular Groceries, not my Storm Groceries.

Of course it was NUTS. The parking lot was crawling with snow vultures, all of them driving (and walking)  as if there were already four feet of snow on the ground. I have never wished for a cattle scoop on the front of my car more than I did today.

BUT the trip to the store was completely worth the insanity because I saw the best thing ever, the thing that made me laugh out loud and realize how much I love living in this crazy city:

A cart filled to the top with packages of toilet paper.

The cart's owner? Was pulling bread from the shelf.

As I stood in line to pay for my Regular Groceries (no TP or milk to be found, thankyouverymuch) the cashier was making a little chitchat with the woman in front of me. "The snow's comin' tonight," he said in all earnestness (for this is a cashier who is not one with the irony or the humor or the sarcasm.) "Before I leave here today I'm gettin' some terlet paper. And bread. And probably some eggs 'n at, too."

36 is apparently the new 40.

Like every other household in the United States, we got a Wii Fit under our Christmas tree. It was the only thing I really asked for because, really, after reading Pitt Girl's stories of being tortured by the evil Wii Steve, well, who WOULDN'T want one?

I go to the gym regularly. I endure Maria's House of Pain and her ridiculously long four-minute planks and weight-laden balances that put Ralph Macchio's sorry karate butt to shame.

Yet when I did the Wii Fit initial test, it told me I was FORTY.

And then? Then it asked me if I tripped a lot when I walked.

In the words of the wise Homer Simpon, "Whyyoulittle.... I oughta..."

Since then it has been my sole mission to bring down my Wii Fit age. It vacillates wildly; one day I will be 34 and a 24 hours later I'm back in my 40s. Apparently there is something like the Dog Years principle at work here - every day in real time is like  five years in Wii Fit time, only you never know which direction that time flows.

BUT. I am winning. Oh, yes... I am now a mere 25, and I can sit on my arse and stare at the Lotus flame without moving a muscle for the full 180 seconds. Take THAT, oh evil bestower of Wii Fit age. Pbthhhh.

Wordless Wednesday: Can someone teach me how to tie that sweater, please?

  

Back when Halloween costumes were cool. And came in a box.

Every Halloween I get a little nostalgic for those costumes I used to have. You remember the ones I'm talking about, right? They came in a box with a clear cellophane cutout on the lid and inside you found:

(1) a body covering of some sort. Always soft vinyl-y plastic, usually one piece, and frequently tied in the back a la a hospital johnny.

(2) a mask. Always hard plastic, always with eye holes, and usually with a little slit in the mouth where the (or at least my) tongue inevitably got caught and pinched.

Hats and capes and wands were highly coveted bonus items and made the costume that much cooler.

The body of the costume was ALWAYS perma-creased from being folded into that little box.

And the costumes ALWAYS smelled like chemically yuck. It was a successful trick-or-treating if you didn't pass out from the fumes before you made it around the block. That stuff? Was probably totally carcinogenic.

But oh, how I loved those costumes. Look -- aren't they teh awesome?

Also teh awesome? My brother's cardigan. 1979, baby.

Anyway, I'd given up hope of ever seeing one of them again. Then last week we hit The History Center and there, hanging on the wall, was an exhibit of those costumes. Complete with boxes!

Is that not the scariest looking clown you have ever seen? No WONDER people have clown phobias... (Can't sleep, clown will eat me. Can't sleep, clown will eat me.)

I was overjoyed to see those costumes. Way more overjoyed than anyone should be when looking at scary smelly possibly carcinogenic plastic costumes. And of course I didn't have my camera with me, so had to suffer through with the Blackberry. Many apologies for the crappiness of that picture, although I guess actually you could thank me for not giving you that clown in full-on high res. (You're welcome.)

And one to clog the arteries

I mentioned biscuits and sausage gravy earlier today and Uncle Crappy and Robin wanted the recipe.

It came from my brother Jason (*wave!*) who makes this awesome concoction whenever we visit. And yes, this is in addition to the 87 pounds of bacon we eat when we visit. Somehow Jason's house makes me crave pork products something fierce. (Stop snickering.)

So, the recipe goes something like this:

Cook 1 pound of country sausage [we used Jimmy Dean country style 'cause that's the closest we get north of the Mason Dixon] until browned.  If you want some spice, add chili flakes when you brown the sausage.

Once the sausage is browned, add one quarter cup of flour to sausage and cook 3 to 4 minutes on medium. This cooks the floury taste out.

Cover the mixture well with milk so that you can't see the sausage - whole milk is preferred since the fat in whole milk keeps it from separating.

Add a few pinches of salt and lots of cracked pepper. Bring to a boil. It will thicken as it does so. If you need to thicken it, use Wondra. If you want to thin out the consistency a bit, then just add more milk.

If you wish to add herbs and such you can do so at the end. Seeds like fennel and such should be added while you brown the sausage.

Enjoy. And make sure to go for a run after you eat this stuff to clear out those arteries...