Sterner Stuff

I think that housewives of the early '60's - military wives, in particular - were a lot more hard core than housewives of today.  Or at least a lot more hard core than I am.  Every mom I knew growing up (admittedly a sample skewed toward military families), had to spend a year or more at a time as a single parent while their husbands were overseas on an unaccompanied tour and/or fighting a war.  It was just something that had to be done, and no one thought anything more about it. 

That was kind of a non sequitur of an opening.  Let me back up.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, the sergeant position opened up here in Wester.  We were very excited about it because if T got the position, we would be able to stay here forever.  We LOVE it here.  Our house, the weather, the schools, the people, the proximity to the ranch - all of it!  T was a really strong candidate and we felt very hopeful going into the interview. 

Unfortunately, at the last minute, one of his co-workers decided he was really excited about the position, too.  As he has 20+ years experience on T, we weren't terribly surprised when he got the position instead of T.  And we like him, so we can't even be mad at him for it.  Rats.

There are a few nebulous promotional prospects that might be coming up out here, but they depend on the cards falling just so.  And even if they do open up, they would be available for guys who are already sergeants before they are open to guys that want to promote to sergeant.  So now T is in a fever to promote.

So.  There aren't any positions here.

Today T applied for a position six hours away near Ginormousville.  A year and a half ago, I would have been turning cartwheels and packing boxes.  Now?  Not so much.  If he gets it, we won't be going with him.  At least not at first.  Since the end goal is to get back here, we aren't in a hurry to move out there.  For at least the remainder of the school year, the kids and I would be staying in Wester.  From there, who knows?  Back and forth for the summer, for sure.  But the next school year?  A total question mark.

I am zero percent excited about being a single parent.  I know I can do it, but it is SO not what I signed up for.  On the other hand, I need to support T in his career and this is what that looks like right now.  So I'll do it.  But I'm not gonna like it.

See?  Not hard core.

Afterthought

After thinking about my resolutions a bit (and reading a lot of yours, too!) I decided that I needed to add one. So here it is:

5. I will make an effort to be a better domestic engineer.

As you know if you have read my blog at all, I am the first to admit I am a lackluster housekeeper at best. Clean enough to sanitary - barely - and drowning in clutter. It's not like I don't like a clean house, but if the choice is put the dishes in the dishwasher/de-clutter the living room/hang up the clean clothes or get some sleep/read a book/take a shower, the latter wins by a landslide. Present me screws future me every time.

I have been thinking about it, and being a home maker is my job and I haven't been doing it particularly well. In a professional setting, I would not be doing bad enough to get fired, but I wouldn't be climbing the corporate ladder either. When I was working outside the home, that would never have been okay with me.

My plan is this: I will take those few extra minutes after meals and before bed to take care of the smallish tasks before little undone chores become junk-sucking vortexes (vorteces? vorteci?) of clutter and become monumental tasks. Once it reaches those epic proportions, I feel defeated before I have even started. My theory is that if I can get it clean, keeping it clean shouldn't be quite so hard.

Wish me luck!

Below the Belt

Backstory: Our lab, Blackie, has separation anxiety so extreme that she is anxious even when we are home. She follows me from room to room everywhere I go. If she could insert herself under my skin, or bond with me at the molecular level, her anxieties might possibly be eased. As both of these options break the laws of physics, I guess I am stuck with my furry shadow. This wouldn't be a problem except that a.) our kitchen was designed by a sadist and becomes impassable if more than one person enters it and b.) Blackie tends to lie down about three inches behind my feet when I am working at the counter, so when I take a step back she gets stepped on and I take a header into the counters. Good times.

So today I had a brainstorm and placed a little rug in the kitchen, but out of the traffic pattern, for Blackie to lay down on. When she gets in my way, I tell her to go to her rug and pat/praise her copiously when she does. I am guardedly optimistic that this plan could keep us both out of casts.

Anyhoo, back to the below-the-belt-y-ness. When T got back from his weekend of hunting (no resentment here! Nuh uh! Bring on the single parenting!) I told him that I was trying a little experiment in the kitchen.

Completely deadpan, he looked me in the eye and said, "What? Cleaning?"

And then didn't understand why I didn't think that was as funny as he did. Of course, I am the first to admit that I am not a good housekeeper, but when he added insult to injury by tacking on "I've cleaned the kitchen more than you have this week!" it was all I could do not to pinch his head off (to borrow a phrase from my mother).

I guess he thinks magic elves come and put the dishes in the dishwasher and then unload it again. And that he has accomplished something amazing by putting his (many) dishes near (not in) the dishwasher. Does he think that dishes don't accumulate over the day and that maybe that plate sitting out is from lunch and not the night before? Aaaarg! That I have loaded the dishwasher today - possibly multiple times! - but those darn kids just insist on eating regularly? What really irks me is that I produce less than 20% of the dirty dishes but take care of well over 95%? Isn't there another adult in this house who could run the dishwasher?

I'm all bent out of shape, but I know that he didn't mean for me to take his seriously. He thought he was being hilarious and cracked himself up for ten minutes. Still. Humph.

Good News. Bad News.

The good news is that I have discovered the Zen of yard work. This is a good thing as we have close to an acre of lawn. I sat outside on a little stool and pulled weeds for over an hour this afternoon. The bad news is that every vibrantly green shoot in our yard is apparently a sticker bur. Or at least I think they are. Wouldn't that be a kick in the pants if I was out there systematically pulling up my grass instead of grass-like weeds?

I turned to Google to figure out what I should pull up, but it was surprisingly unhelpful. The photos were all either too far away or too close up to tell me what I really wanted to know. Or they used all Latin. Or just showed the sticker part of the sticker plant and not the plant part. (I actually had the same problem today in trying to identify what looks like the bastard love child of a prairie dog and a weasel that I saw in my yard. All genus, phylum, species. No satisfaction.)

In the end, I went where I almost always go with puzzles I can't figure out: Daddy. He grew up in Wester - on a ranch, no less! - so he was quite familiar with all the things that go stick in the grass. Also? Daddy has the best lawn in his whole neighborhood. Not a weed in sight. You can walk barefoot without fear in his yard - which is my end goal.

Basically, he told me that the types of grasses that grow here put out runners and creep along the ground, so I should pull up anything that was growing taller than its surroundings and sprouted from a single corm. No sweat, right? Okay, this is west Texas, so there's gonna be sweat no matter what, but all the lovely rain we have been getting has sprouted a lush crop weeds as far as the eye can see.

Hoping to avoid maaaaany hours of labor, I looked to the internet again hoping for a chemical solution. And sure, they are out there. But after reading a site or two, I was sure my kids would sprout a second head and start talking out of their navels if I used them. My philosophy is more organic, anyway, so I tried those sites, too. They uniformly recommended that I nourish the soil with sugar (really! plain white table sugar) and pull them as they come up. Does Sam's sell 50 pound bags of sugar?

Sigh. I pulled a packed 3-gallon bucket's worth this afternoon. Just a kazillion more buckets to go!

Good to Be Home!

It is SO good to be home! It would be better if I didn't have to clean absolutely every surface of my house in preparation for listing it, but I'll take what I can get.

New Town was lovely. I think we are really going to like it there. I think I saw more of my aunt (who lives there) in the last week than I have in the entire previous four years. Awesome! I can't wait to get the little cousins together. Z is very excited, too.

Anyhoo, as there is still so much to do, I am afraid I will be a bit of a lame post-er for the next little bit. Rats. In that spirit, here is my first installment:

Redneck Time-Out

Trying Tuesday

If yesterday was 'Not Me! Monday,' then today was 'Trying Tuesday.' Actually, it started last night. Z had made an unholy mess in the living room, dumping every toy out of every bin. At bed time, I told her to get it cleaned up while I headed up to put Q to bed. She shimmied upstairs just in time to brush her teeth and get her books.

When I got downstairs, I saw that she hadn't really cleaned up. She had just scooped most of the toys off the floor into the bins and hid them behind the ottoman. Arg!

Lather, rinse, repeat today at nap time. Except I think that she may have actually imported every toy from every sweatshops in the third world to create the mess in the living room. Maybe she imported them from another dimension. Anyway, I have never seen such a mess! I told her to get it cleaned up while I got Q down. 15 minutes later, I don't think a single toy had migrated to its spot. So I set a timer and told her that if the timer went off, she would lose a book (she gets three) and have time added to quiet time. The timer went off three times without the population of homeless toys decreasing one. bit.

So off she went to her room where she got no books and was banished until dark. I told her there would be no television, movies or treats until the toys were picked up. I guess all the alone time made an impression on her, because she cleaned up as soon as she come downstairs.

You would think that such a smart little girl would have learned her lesson by now. Nope. We get upstairs for bath time and, you guessed it, every toy is off of every shelf and deposited on her floor and bed. She had to clean it up before she could come to the tub. She piddled and played and almost missed out on bath time entirely, streaking in as I am getting Q into his jammies.

I get her bathed in record time (hubby was watching Q, but needed to get to bed himself) and went to her room to select books. She had done the same thing in her room that she had done downstairs. All of her stuff was swept off the floor and onto her window seat. Stuffed animals, dirty clothes, books, action figures all in a giant heap. So AGAIN I told her to get it cleaned up the right way while I got her brother down.

She howled and yelled her favorite phrase of the day, "But I don't WANT to clean up!" She stomped and cried and basically did everything possible to keep Q from going to sleep. When it was finally her turn for books, her room was cleaned the right way (this story makes me sound like Mommy Dearest, but my standards are actually quite reasonable: books on the shelf, animals on the seat and nothing on the floor) and we were able to have story time.

When we sat down, we had the discussion about making better choices, and consequences and responsibility. About how I didn't love doing laundry or cleaning up dog poop, but it was my responsibility so I did it. I thought I had really gotten through to her when she gave me a big hug and said, "But I didn't want to clean up." Like talking to a wall.

1000 Words Worth a Picture?

The story you are about to read is real. No pictures were included to protect the innocent (that's you).

Picture, if you will, a pony-tailed, bespectacled, almost middle-aged roly-poly gal dressed in her underwear, a t-shirt that didn't quite reach the top of her drawers, bobby socks, running shoes, and pink rubber gloves with mod polka dot trim. Now, if that didn't make you shove a pencil into your brain, picture that gal down on all fours with her dimpled tush in the air scrubbing the shower Cinderella style.

Yep. That was me this afternoon. I was going to give the shower a quick scrub*, when I realized that the cleaner would likely bleach out the navy sweatsuit I was wearing. So I took off the sweatsuit. I was left with what I described above. When I caught sight of myself in the full length mirror, I had to laugh at myself. Now you can, too! Enjoy!

*Quick scrub my cleanser-fume watering eye! I had to soak the dang thing in soap scum remover THREE times before the shower floor was reasonably clean. My arms and hands are sore from scrubbing. Hey, I got a clean shower and a bonus upper body work out!

Mama Jeckyl, Mrs. Hyde

If you have spent any time around here, you know that housework is not my strong suit. For me it is an endless uphill battle: me versus the marauding hordes of dirty dishes, towering piles of laundry and tumbleweeds of dog fur. There never seem to be enough hours in the day to keep up with it all - not that I would - and most of the time I'm okay with that. Then one day, I'll get caught up in a fit of industry that would make your head spin. Today was one of those days.

Kitchen - from such a mess I wouldn't let anyone see it to so clean you could do surgery on the counter top.

Laundry - Every stitch washed. Most of it folded.

Attic - Christmas boxes (finally) put away instead of making our hallway a fire hazard. (I am embarrassed to admit that I didn't get our Christmas lights down until this morning either.) Christmas bags and boxes reorganized. Then for good measure, I rearranged the attic so we could actually get to our stuff.

Dinner - Wholesome and from scratch.

Living room - No stray Little People to be found.

This all sounds great, but nothing comes for free. The price my family pays for my productivity is that I morph from lazy-laid-back-sloth-Mama to scary-screamy-stabby-Mama. I may or may not have screamed at my two-year-old until my head spun around for climbing into the laundry basket with the clean clothes. I may or may not have delayed feeding my oldest child until I had disinfected every surface in my kitchen. I may or may not have had violent thoughts about my husband for even entering the (poorly designed and easily crowded) kitchen. Good times.

Surely there is some happy medium between slovenly and psycho. I have yet to find it.

$nafu

Before we were married, my husband somehow got the idea that I was not good at handling money - despite the fact that I had lived on my own from the time I was 18, worked a good bit of that time and had purchased a house. (cough, cough, while he lived at home until we were married, cough) Once we were married, it was decided that he would handle the finances. This was fine with me. While I am capable of doing the family accounting, I had no burning desire to do so.

This arrangement has worked fairly well. Until today. Up until now, T kept me up to date on our account balances and we haven't had any problems. Well, with all of the studying/hunting/anything-else-he-can-think-of-ing, he had fallen behind on the data entry. Like several months behind. For my part, I toodled along buying Christmas gifts, shower gifts, cute but unnecessary clothes for the kids, and way too many books without consulting T about the balance. Clearly it was a breakdown in the (faulty) system and we were both at fault.

When T went out to run some errands today, his debit card was declined. He came home all fired up about where had the money gone? How much had I spent on Christmas? Blah, blah, blah. Now we still had money in the bank, so we didn't overdraw or anything, but he was steaming mad (at the situation, not at me. He agrees that we were both at fault). Honestly, I am surprised that it didn't happen before now.

So now we start a new era, where we are partners in our finances. This has to be a better arrangement. Besides, I get to geek out on Excel with spreadsheets and graphs and stuff. It will be good to know where all the money is going. I suspect Wal-Mart, as it is the only place to shop here in Small Town. Damn Wal-Mart.

Definition of Ironic

My "office" is literally a walk-in closet off of the kitchen. It has a built-in desk and some utilitarian shelving. And a really ugly '80's builder special light fixture. I don't know what it is about this light, but it is where all manner of creepy crawlies come to die. The first year we lived her, we found three(!) dead scorpions in it. Today, it was merely a collection of spiders.

When I came into my office yesterday morning, the light did this weird power surge deal, then died. So I unscrewed the screws that held the enclosed glass shade and took the filthy thing to the kitchen. As I mentioned there were a bunch of crispy spiders in there, along with what appeared to be baked on spider threads. Yay!

I let the nasty thing soak soak all day, then scrubbed it out after the kids were asleep. I had just gotten the worst of the bug goo off and thought to myself, "Man this thing is ugly. I wish I didn't have to put it back up." And what happened next? When I flipped it over to rinse the outside, I lost my grip, fumbled to catch it, then watched it shatter in the sink.

Guess I should be careful what I wish for!

Worst. Wife. Ever.

So for Thanksgiving I tootled of to south Texas, leaving T behind secure in the knowledge that come Turkey Day, he would be celebrating with fellow law enforcement officer Auntie M, who also got the shaft had to work on Thanksgiving. Well, long story short, Auntie M had a change of plans that made it impossible for her to do turkey dinner with T. So as I was sitting down to delicious desserts with family and friends, he was headed home to have his solitary Thanksgiving, er, burrito.

Oh, the guilt! I had intended to buy him an old fashioned turkey T.V. dinner with all the sides carefully segregated as kind of a joke, but I managed to drop even that pathetic ball. (I didn't do the laundry before I left, either. There. My list of wifely sins is complete.)

For his part, T was remarkably cheerful in the face of both working and not getting to gorge on gourmet goodies on Thanksgiving. He did, however, request that I make him a pie upon my return. "No problem!" I said, and set to work as soon as I got back to Small Town.

I may have mentioned it a time or two, but I am not a domestic diva. I am the kind of homemaker that lets eggs spoil in the refrigerator. So lately I have been purchasing Eggbeaters (egg substitute) instead. But I even managed to let homogenized egg-like liquid spoil in the fridge, so the last time I bought some I carefully froze it into cubes. By my measurement, three cubes should have been the equivalent on one egg.

So I whipped up a pecan pie right quick, using nine egg cubes in place of the three eggs the recipe calls for. Everything looked fine, so I put the pie in the oven and never gave it another thought until the timer went off an hour later. Imagine my surprise to find all of my carefully arranged pecans standing up on edge a la Jiffy Pop because the custard portion of the pie had expanded like a souffle? The custard was a pale yellow color instead of the more standard caramel-y color pecan pies usually are, so I put it back in the oven for 10 more minutes. When I took it out, the custard/souffle started to compress, so I just nudged the pecans back into position and hoped for the best.

Fast forward to dessert time: I cut into the pie... and the custard is runny. Blarg! So I decide to cook it for a little longer. And a little longer. And a little longer. Finally, after 30 more minutes, I was afraid that I had created a confection capable of pulling teeth, so I took it out. The custard was still light, but seemed a bit more normal.

The pie's innards, while tasty, were still pretty runny and slightly oily. The pecans around the edge were bordering on burned and would yank your crowns if you weren't careful. You would never know that I had pulled off an entire Thanksgiving meal just days previously. Of course, my dad made the pecan pie.

T said it was the thought that counts - through teeth glued together by overcooked Karo. Sigh.

Alpha Mom

I am not a competitive mom. One of the (many) reasons I love Z's school is that everyone is so laid back. They would never even raise an eyebrow if you brought store-bought cookies for the class Thanksgiving feast... Perhaps this is why I always go over the top with the homemade baked goods. Everyone is extra appreciative because they know that you didn't have to do it.

I am totally bummed that you can't tell how cute my turkey couple is in person. I started with yellow cake mix and store-bought chocolate frosting. The hen on the left was (obviously) the easier of the two. I just squeezed the frosting out of a zip top bag, making a large blob for a head, then poked in the candy corn and candy eyes.

The tom, while still totally doable, took a little more work. First I frosted and sprinkled the cupcakes with chocolate sprinkles. Then I decorated a Nutter Butter for the head with white frosting, candy dots for the irises, a candy corn beak and a Twizzlers* wattle. I used assorted colors of Twizzlers for the tail and chocolate Twizzlers cut on an angle for the wings.

Next year, I think I will just do a miniature version of the hen. How much sugar does a four-year-old really need, anyway? I know that they will just be licking off all of the icing!

Last year, I made turkeys out of rice krispie treats and chocolate chip cookies. The tail and beak were made of candy corn. Chocolate frosting glued the whole thing together.

Clearly I was very pleased with myself.

Of course, I should expect the post-party-teachers to hate me, seeing as how I got the kids all hopped up on chocolate covered sugar bombs, then left them to deal with it. I'm awesome like that.

*I think Twizzlers are vile, but kids seem to love them!

Golden Eggbeater

In the words of Dodi, "I am a stay at home mom - not to be confused with "housewife" which would imply that I have any interest at all in housekeeping... which I don't." If they gave an Oscar-like award for housewifery - the Golden Eggbeater, maybe? - my mom-in-law would have a whole shelf full. I, however, would not even be allowed to watch the award show on TV. This said, I have of late been in a veritable cleaning frenzy. Or at least as frenzied as I get when company isn't eminent.

I have spent a fair amount of time on piddly detail stuff like organizing closets and the laundry room. But I have managed to haul out the totally cool vacuum Sister K gave me for Christmas last year and do battle with the dog fur more than once this week. Unprecedented! I have also made a herculean effort to keep the garbage dump kitchen counters clear of clutter. It is amazing how one little stray catalog attracts junk like an electromagnet. And that cooking thing? Totally messes up my kitchen. Ugh!

Anyway, lots of sweat has been invested lately. T walked into the living room this evening and said, "This is nice. The living room looks really clean for a change." Oh! Stabbed right in my homemaking heart! He realized as the words were leaving his mouth that they had sounded a lot better in his head. You know, less OMG-the-house-is-usually-a-total-sty-ish.

He backpedalled like crazy, but not to worry. I took his 'compliment' in the spirit it was given. Who knows? Maybe there is a Golden Eggbeater in my future.

Rant... Sort of

Let me preface this post by saying that I love my husband. He is a good man, a good husband and the love of my life. However, there are days where I am not sure I would pee on him if he was on fire. Today was one of those days.

It all started when he got up this morning. Now I take a lot of ribbing about my status as "not a morning person," but he was really taking the cake. He was stomping around growling at everyone and complaining about how tired he was. This after he went to bed before me and got up after me.

He stomped upstairs and ate his breakfast in our bedroom so that he wouldn't have to deal with the children. If he'd worked yesterday, I might cut him a little slack. He does put his life on the line for a living. But yesterday? He was gone ALL DAY shopping for hunting gear and accessories for his new Jeep. The whole freaking day. Somehow it has never occurred to him that his days off are also potentially my days off. You know, if I weren't a single parent and all. Aaarrg!

He abandoned ship again today after his solitary breakfast, returning home (almost) in time for lunch. He then acted all put out with me because I hadn't planned a hot meal for him. Seriously. Has he met me? Lunch is every man for himself around here. I make meals for the kids, but T? Is grown.

Then there was the classic trash issue. This is the one household chore he is responsible for (because I am even worse at it than he is). I asked him to take out the (overflowing) trash from the kitchen. For the third time. Then he was all, "Oh. You mean now?" I know that it is self defeating of me, but I just can't bring myself to do it for him. I know that if I cave - even once - it will suddenly be my job forever.

After lunch he returned to his usual sweet self. He even apologized for being grumpy all morning. Will the wonders ever cease? Then he redeemed himself fully (despite the fact that he walked away from the dinner table without clearing anything but his single plate) by bringing me a surprise Blizzard. Banana Cream Pie! Yum! Apparently the way to my heart is the drive-through at Dairy Queen.

By the time he was ready for bed, he was back in my good graces. As he was shuffling off, I said, "How can I be all rant-y on my blog when you are being so sweet now?" To which he replied, "You be quiet, woman! And don't you make any noise when you come to bed. And don't ruffle the covers, either. There. Is that better?"

I just love him.

More Catching Up to Do

Just returned from more glam jet setting - or a trip to see Sister K in California. Whatever. I will fill in all the details as I can.

I returned to a house that seems to have been the scene of a stuffed animal snuff film. During the week I have been gone, it seems that the fur from my pack o' pooches has mated with the pink poodle fur from Z's costume to produce bastard mutant hairballs of death. They are everywhere. This is beyond even my tolerance for filth. I am feeling the need to clean compulsively for a while. You know, like when your mother-in-law, your husband's boss and a news crew is coming kind of compulsion. Can't. write. Must. clean.

Anyway, I'll do my best to catch up!

New Addition

Well, we have a new member of the family. No, I'm not pregnant. And I did not risk divorce by bringing another dog into the house. My husband brought home his new Jeep yesterday. It is a lovely dark green (not to be confused with the hideous baby-poo green that is also available), hard top, 4-door Rubicon. He managed to find one with only one undesired whistle/bell: the mega sound and navigational system, complete with Sirius satellite radio. After less than 24 hours, he is already talking about adding Sirius service to the monthly budget. Funny, when I said that I wanted those same features in my next car, he laughed himself silly. But after less than a day with them in his new car, they have become necessities!

He has spent every spare minute since returning home with the Jeep surfing the internet for off-roading accessories. I call it Jeep p*rn. And like many men with their, ahem, visual aides he wants me to look and be enthusiastic. He's all, "What do you think of this bumper?" And I go, "Oooh, baby. That bumper is so big." Then he says, "What do you think of this (insert unintelligible part here)?" to which I reply, "Any way you want it, baby." And so on. Snore. Are we done yet?

A very cool side benny of the Jeep homecoming is that my mom-in-law (love!) came into town to help with transportation issues and stayed to sit with the monsters kids so T and I could have an actual DATE! Without kids! Like a couple!

We went to the local Japanese steakhouse where we discovered the reason that everything tastes so good there is because the chef used at least a pound of butter in cooking our meal. Who knew the Japanese took cooking lessons from Paula Deen? Over-cooked shrimp aside, everything was delicious, if not diet friendly. Afterwards, we drove around town like a couple of teenagers (they roll up the sidewalks at 9 pm here in Small Town) and messed around with the new cool sound system. We topped off the festivities (in for a penny, in for a pound!) with ice cream.

You would think that after such a nice evening out that we would return home to do the thing that loving married couples do when someone else has put the children to bed. And we did. We went to bed early. To sleep off all of the butter.

Eeek! Cooties!

I am not typically a germphobic mom. At our house, the 3-second rule is the if-it-doesn't-get-up-and-crawl-away rule. Luckily, the dog pack keeps the amount of food on the floor to a minimum. If the kids are motivated enough to beat the hounds to the table scraps, let them have them, I say. But even I have limits.

The kids and I are down in south Texas visiting my parents. The post-Ike weather is pleasant, so we headed off to the park. Our first mission was to feed the ducks. Z was much more interested in petting the zillions of chihuahuas that were also visiting the park. I had no fear of exposing her to strange dog cooties and/or drawing back a nub from the notoriously bite-y doglets. Once the Oaty O's were gone and Q had been grabbed by the overalls to keep from diving head first into the soggy bread duck filth, Zoe started collecting duck and goose feathers. Other than hoping they didn't go in her mouth, no germ fear there. Then we head over to the play area. Z is running and playing and grabbing and collecting any number of germs from the petri dishes called playground equipment and this doesn't bug me either.

What does set the alarm bells to ringing? The park drinking fountain. We drink out of water fountains all the time. The one at school is a must-stop location on the going home tour. We got drinks out of the fountain at my mom's memory care facility just today. But somehow the thought of Z drinking out of the fountain at the park totally wigged me out. I couldn't even put my disgust into words when she asked me why. Amorphous visions of hepatitis, trench mouth and pink eye were buzzing around my head. Blarg! So I just herded her into the car with promises of chocolate milk with dinner (because, of course, I am the kind of mom who never remembers to bring water to the park.)

So as I watch Z eating M&M's off the floor, I wonder to myself what makes that okay with me, but not the park water fountain. I guess I it's just the whole the germs you know thing. If they are our germs, how bad can they be?

Do you have any irrational germ fears? Do tell!

Stellar Parenting*

And the award for making the best out of a bad(ish) situation: Me! Despite the fact that T is (bored out of his mind waiting to be put to work) on hurricane relief duty down in Houston (or a high school gym/cafeteria in Houston, whatever) and that mean ol' Ike has dumped a steady/heavy rain all day on our little house in the swamp, today was a great day at home with the kids. This was a great relief as there have been a lot of days lately when I feel like the worst. parent. evah.

What was special about today? Nothing much. The kids spent the morning in front of the neglect-o-matic (TV) with a minimum of carnage. (Note to self: write the Disney Channel a thank you note.) I made these cool zucchini pizza boats that I thought were pretty yummy (I'd link to the recipe, but I changed it too much to make it worth your time) and were WW friendly. The kids ate the innards and left the zucchini part of the boats (Z told me she would like zucchini when she was grown up), but the joke is on them. The inside parts that I scraped out of the zukes were cooked and reinserted as filling. Ha! I snuck in a green veggie! I rule!

Then (cue the choir of angels!), Z and Q took naps at the same time! Unprecedented! Usually they are tag-team sleepers and one is awake at all times. This is probably the real reason I had a great day: two hours of uninterrupted time to myself. Also unprecedented.

When my munchies woke up - in good moods, no less - Z pressed her nose against the window and looked longingly outside. We'd been cooped up for a couple of days because of the rain and she desperately wanted to go outside even though it was raining steadily. So I said, "Why not?" and herded children and dogs alike out into the garage. Daredevil that she is, Z ran directly out onto the driveway and did spins in the rain. Q was a little more timid, but when I stomped out into the puddles with the dogs, he followed. It took him a minute to warm up to it, but once he decided that playing in the rain was big fun he giggled and splashed. Too cute. Something about getting wet brings out the feisty in Pomeranians, so both of them were buzzing around on little wet chicken legs and barking at the splashes. They were clearly having an awesome time. Me, too. My one regret was that T wasn't there to catch it all on film. He would have stayed nice and dry in the garage, thank you very much, but would have been an awesome camera man. I want to hold on to the novelty and wonder of playing in the rain with my kids for the first time.

After we came in, the kiddos hopped into the tub to clean/warm up. Once they were dried off and jammied up, we trooped downstairs to make homemade pizza. Earlier, Z had helped me make the pizza dough from an awesome recipe I found in Wondertime Magazine. I have a bad track record with yeast breads, but this one did its yeasty thing and puffed up in no time. Sweet! Apart from an unfortunate deployment of the smoke alarm (I was a little over enthusiastic with the corn meal you use to keep the pizza from sticking to the pan and it burned - but just the corn meal, not the pizzas!), they turned out great. Then we all cuddled up on the couch to watch a movie together.

Then the babies went to bed and everyone lived happily ever after. Or not. When we got upstairs to read books before bedtime, Z felt hot to me. Yep, 102.3 degrees. Sigh. I knew it was too good to last.

*For once, totally not sarcastic!

Cobbler is the Devil

Before I got married, I threw parties at least three times per year. Big parties with themes and fun food. We registered for tons of cool serving ware because I just assumed that this level of partying would continue after we were married. Hey, we had twice the friends! Then we moved from Ginormousville to Small Town. It took years for me to make enough friends to even consider a party. So this week, for the first time in the longest (maybe ever in our marriage), we had people over for dinner. It was a casual grilling out party where everyone brought something to throw on the grill and a side to share.

I had such good intentions when I went to the grocery store. I was going to make a delicious Caprese Salad. Light! Yummy! But the road to hell is paved with BBQ potato chips, cobbler and margaritas. My inner (trailer park) Martha Stewart wouldn't allow me to only provide a salad. What if everyone brings salad? What if the pot-luck stuff was too exotic for my picky husband? So I went hog wild at the MegaMart. I just couldn't help myself. I got the afore mentioned chips and the stuff to make both margaritas and a blackberry peach cobbler - with ice cream, of course.

The party was big fun. We totally enjoyed hanging out with a bunch of guys T works with and their families. We indulged in meat cooked with fire, fabulous sides and strawberry margaritas. (This is the first time in four years that I am not pregnant or nursing. Margaritas! Squee!) We finished off with the cobbler. So all's well with party eating. I had budgeted points for the party and didn't lose my head entirely in the face of so many good things to eat. I had been to the gym, gone grocery shopping, cleaned the pool and cleaned the house that day, so I had racked up enough activity points to eat with out guilt.

Then everyone went home and left me with half of a cobbler. It is an evil cobbler. It whispers to me sweetly every time I walk by the fridge. "Oh, Rae Aaah-nnn! Rae Aaaaah-nnn! Eat me, eat me! Eat. me." I made the dang thing, so I know full well that it has an entire stick of butter in it. I'm guessing that if I give in to my baser impulses and snarf the whole thing down in a buttery, crumbly, gooey fit of excess that the total number of butter sticks I have shed would decrease exponentially. Darn. I might as well smear its berry goodness right on my butt.

And while that idea might have some appeal for T, I think I will give it a pass. As a matter of fact, the mental picture it generates has put me right off cobbler. For now. Until the next time I walk by the fridge.

Big Love

I am puttering around in the kitchen listening to my hubby reading nap time stories on the baby monitor. I am all melty. Before she went upstairs, Z grabbed my hand and said, "You can come up and give me a hug and kiss when Daddy is through." So sweet. Though there are the occasional off days (awful, terrible, no good, very bad days! - Judith Viorst said it best.), I love this little family right down to the core of my being.

Especially when they are sleeping.