Your nerd news for today

We packed up the kids for our second annual birthday pilgrimage to Funspot. Last year was Jeremy and the debut of the Wiebe shirt. Today they were having a tournament, and we got to see this "celebrity".

And on the way home...

Sebastian: Ask me what I'm doing.

Dorian: What are you doing?

Sebastian: Being cool.

Smells like my birthday (one day early)

I was already psyched for today because Dustin and Rob are coming over for pizza and cake and RockBand. (I am, of course, disappointed that Cortney and Quinnie can't be here, but I'm not going to let it interfere with the rawk.)

Then I call Jeremy and he asks if I can bring the kids by to visit today. Why? I wondered. Well, his coworkers found out it was my birthday tomorrow, so they got me cake. Awesome, right? Two cakes in one day = sugared up Hott Mama. So, I put Dorian in the car and we headed over. (I did not want to wait for Sebastian to get off the bus. He doesn't even like cake anyway.)

After Dorian starts devouring my cake, they asked me how old I would be this year. I tell them 33, to which they reply that they would have guessed 25. (Clearly, my Delia's top was distracting from the gray hair that has recently been flourishing on my head.) And here's where instead of cake, I decided to put my foot in my mouth. "If I were 25, that would have made me a 19 year old mom... [realize 2 of the women I'm talking to were teen mothers] and I don't think I could have handled that." Um, whoops! So I tried to cover it up with, "but if only I'd started then, the kids would be out of the house when I was 40." Go ahead, girl, keep diggin' that hole...

At that point, I thanked them again for the cake and stuffed my face with it to prevent any further embarrassment to myself or others.

Sorry, Cortmee!

I know you said you wouldn't have a friend who went to PTA meetings... but now you have a friend on the board of the PTA. (I am still your friend, right?)

Luckily, I managed to not come off completely insane since someone else asked the same question I did about whether the other people who were removed from the running had removed themselves, or were tied up and gagged in a back room somewhere. (Something in the middle.)

So, here I am: Treasurer of the impotent little parent group at my son's elementary school. Just what I always dreamed I'd be on the cusp of my 34th year.

But it's not a coup...

Tomorrow night are the PTA elections for which I have thrown my name in the Treasurer hat. I just received a call saying that I had been elected treasurer.

"But the elections are tomorrow."

"Well, the board had a meeting on Friday afternoon..." And basically decided that they didn't want people running against each other...

"But isn't that what elections are all about?"

And it was determined that the other candidates for the positions "weren't as interested".

Good gracious!

Well, our gracious guests left around 4 after our wild and crazy* barbecue/carnival. Flapdoodle left me a copy of a knitting magazine from about 4 years ago which she was not currently using. Now, I did not find anything in there that I could use with the yarn I have on hand, but it did remind me that I need to get myself in gear if I am ever going to have my summer sweater. And summer starts soon. We have already had several 90+ degree days here, so I need to get a move on.

I pulled out all my appropriate books and magazines and finally settled on a pattern. It is simple and it works with my yarn. And look, my yarn matches my rhododendrons-- bonus!

Here's the trouble. That Debbie Bliss may be able to design some beautiful sweaters, but that woman can't do math for shit. The back is supposed to be 18.25" across. The gauge of the sweater is 22 stitches to 4". You cast on 115 stitches to start the back. According to my math, that would be just over 20". So, guess what? I'll be altering this pattern, too.

*Not really, but there is a hole in the kiddie pool now. Does that count?

Ridiculous weekend

This weekend has been, and will be, busy... but in a nice way.

Yesterday, I went to play "tennis" with Christine and Rosemary which was a total farce. We all got some exercise, but the balls were all over the place. We were fortunate to have the courts pretty much to ourselves so we didn't embarrass ourselves too much. We were all equally bad and half our cardio workout came from laughing. Can't complain about that.

Then I went to Keene where I managed to only get myself some more white thread for the languishing picnic quilt project. There was nothing at TJ Maxx, except a pathetic little episode where a girl snatched a dress off the rack the moment I returned it there and whined to her mother that she "needed" it. I need to stop shopping in the junior's section. Later, Christine and I went out for a drink and that was very nice until this asshole I can't stand decided to sit at the next table, and we cleared out.

Today, we went for a drive to find a diner (success!) and also went over to Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. It is a cool little town with a Bridge of Flowers which is a pedestrian bridge lushly planted with, you guessed it, lots of flowers. There were beautiful irises, peonies, wisteria, and these awesome things that look like they are from outer space. We also visited the ice cream parlor/candy shop before heading home.

Tomorrow we are having the Flapdoodlers and our Hazzardous friends over for a little lunchtime barbecue/kids carnival. The boys and I made some bean bags with some of my scrap fabric, and Sebastian is working on a line-up of games to play. Should be fun...

We're ALL crazy

Our garden, Wednesday: Dorian holds an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie in his hand.

Me: Do you guys want to pick some radishes for dinner?

Boys: Yeah!

Me: Dorian, which color do you want to pick?

Dorian: Purple.

Me: Okay. You can pick this one. Sebastian, what color do you want to pick?

Sebastian: Red.

At this point, I look up to see that Dorian has taken a bite out of the radish he just pulled out of the ground and has dirt/mud all over his mouth and chin. He doesn't even like radishes. Did he forget which hand held the cookie? Or is he just nuts?

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Also Wednesday, after a trip to the river wherein Christine's wallet went missing and we feared it stolen.

Sebastian: You know, Dad, we stopped in at the police station on the way home. I bet the police are lining up the suspects now.

No, but how optimistic. Lucky for her, no one has tried to use the cards at all so it seems to just be lost and not in the hands of criminal masterminds.

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Today, approximately 8:50am.

Jeremy volunteered to chaperone Sebastian's field trip to a farm an hour and a half away. He will be driving the minivan loaded with Flapdoodle's son, the boy who skipped school and had to be tracked down by police, and Sebastian. This is the same crew I drove (+Dorian) for their other field trip to the co-op which, shockingly, I did not blog about. This trip resulted in my children, who were riding in the middle seats, being reclined onto the laps of Flapdoodle Junior and the Skipper. This happened during a 5 minute drive.

Having some idea of the insanity he was in for, Jeremy asked Flapman to ride shotgun, but as far as I know Flapman had to back out at the last minute. Keep the man in your thoughts and prayers today, please.

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As for me, I have a little new evidence of my own lack of sanity for you. Next Wednesday is the election for new officers for the PTA next year. I will be on the ballot for Treasurer. If I am elected, I will have to go to every meeting. (I already do, but I have had a pretty easy out up until now.)

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If you spot any of our lost minds, please return them at your earliest convenience.

Spare tires aren't just for cars

What has happened to me?! I knew I had gained about 8 pounds this winter/spring, and I was chalking it up to a few things

• not making it to exercise class every week
• having popcorn and ice cream every night
• eating too much granola
• my body's natural reaction to a poorly insulated house with no heat upstairs.

So it was no surprise that my pants felt tight. But then I realized that they are only tight at the waistband. Not in the hips. Not in the butt.

Everything looks exactly the same except that I have the mythical "spare tire" action happening around my waist. Let's hope the 150 crunches I did last night do something to correct this.

It's a miracle!

I was just out in my yard when-- get this!-- C brought my pot back. Clean.

The return was followed up with the question, "You don't happen to have a can of tomato soup, do you?" I said, no, we don't eat much tomato soup in the spring.

It's only now that I wonder whether answering in the affirmative would have meant also reloaning him my pot.

My new best friend

Remember the other day when my neighbor C came over to borrow a pot? Well, I never got my pot back, but the story didn't end there.

Friday, we had our friends Josh and Sarah over for dinner, and as we were finishing Sarah's amazing strawberry rhubarb pie, there was a knock at the kitchen door. It was C, all dressed up in a shirt and tie, asking if I might have time the next day to help him practice his sales presentation for a new job. I agree to do it Saturday evening at 7:30. He seemed so earnest, and it reminded me of when my brother was selling home security systems.

So, Saturday, we go about our business, attending a little league game with the sole purpose of having hot dogs and slush puppies, and then launching the rocket Sebastian has been working on Chez Flapdoodle. We come home and I decide I don't really feel like cooking and we still have some gift certificates from my mother, so I grab my purse and make for the door. And there is C wondering if we could do the presentation a little early. Like, now. A half hour? Fine, come on in.

So, of course, he's selling knives. The most sanitary, ergonomically-designed, sharpest knives known to man. He also has a pair of shears that can turn a penny into a corkscrew. It is all terribly thrilling, and then he hits us with the price. Close to a thousand dollars a set. Yeah, no thanks. I would love a nice knife. I truly would. But now is not the time for spending that kind of cash on something I don't need.

I managed to get out of it all thanks to the remnants of the giant pit in my yard. For it is true that I have no extra money right now due to that broken sewer pipe. So Jeremy and I gave him lots of encouragement and sent him on his way. He's a nice kid and I hope this works out for him, even though I know it probably won't. In a town of 12,000 people, how many sets of knives do you think you can sell?

Sunday, I'm out working in the yard when C walks by dressed in his presentation finest. He's just made a $700 sale, probably because they took pity on him for slicing off the tip of his thumb during the demonstration. Can't wait for the next update from my new best friend.

Not totally slacking

I know that my percentages on the knitting projects have been completely stagnant, and there hasn't been any info about the picnic quilt or anything else. Things have been quite busy around here what with broken pipes and volunteering and gardening and stripping wallpaper, so the crafting has fallen by the wayside.

But I just couldn't take the fabric draped over my chair in the laundry room, all cut and ready for sewing Dorian's second pair of pants. So the other night I finally bit the bullet and got started. And then Thursday I finally finished them:

That's Dorian's special pose. Ask him to pose for a picture and that's what you get. Go ahead. Try it for yourself.
I know it is hard to see the pattern. You can click on the picture to get a closer look. This time I added a large side pocket. And when Dorian saw it, he decided he needed two. That is not happening. I am done with this project. Done. Check it off the ever-expanding list.
And then yesterday, I just couldn't wait to try one of the radishes. This one is purple, but we also have red and white. I know it is small, but I am impatient. I did get 4 slices out of it so we could all try and it was the juiciest radish I've ever had. And just the right amount of spice.

I also planted the garden on Friday. Here's what we've got growing:

• snow peas
• carrots
• parsley
• basil
• Swiss chard
• pickling cucumbers
• lipstick peppers (red and sweet)
• jet star tomatoes (red)
• Mr. Stripey tomatoes (yellow with pink stripes)
• chocolate cherry tomatoes
• sun gold cherry tomatoes
• green grape tomatoes
• dusky eggplant
• Easter egg radishes
• red and green lettuces

I also planted some mint and some oregano. And there are blooms on the black raspberry canes... Oh, it is so hard to wait...

Your Friday time waster

Looking for something to do to avoid work, or avoid looking for work? Well, I've got a winner for ya, thanks to good ol' Clockwatcher who has clearly abandoned her blog for the bigger timesuck of Facebook.

So, go here and try not to shoot coffee out of your nose. And make sure you keep going back and back into the older entries because you wouldn't want to miss gems like this or this. Or especially this.

Hey, Good Lookin'... Whatcha got cookin'?

As I was outside this morning with Dorian and Davy Bavy, my teenage neighbor approached.

"Um, hi. Do you have a pot I could, um, borrow?"

"You mean, for cooking?"

"Yeah. The handle fell off of mine."

Somehow, I decided it would be unneighborly to deny the request while simultaneously wondering why there is not another pot in their house, and went inside to fetch the pot I would be least likely to miss should it never return. That would have been the pot that Kathrin gave me after a camping trip some 11 years ago. Unfortunately, that pot was in the sink and full of yogurty water. I may be foolish enough to lend him a pot, but I'm not foolish enough to waste time washing it first. So I grabbed the second oldest and handed it over.

I did manage to find out his name, but I hold no illusions that I will ever get my pot back from Mr. C. Nor am I sure I want it back, because for all I know with the recent activity back there, he's cookin' up some meth with it.

That house is mysterious as it appears from the outside to be about as large as 3 rooms in my house, yet also appears to house 3x as many people. There are definitely 2 teenagers + a girlfriend, 1 four year old and an adult. But there is also a revolving door policy and suspicious trips from the house which result in a return 5 minutes later with a backpack they didn't leave with. I didn't grow up in Baltimore for nothing and I know something's up, and I can guess that my pot is not the only "pot" in that house.

One less thing for me to whine about

My throat is sore, so I must be finished with puppet show filled nature programs for the year. Those kids were cracked out today and I had to holler quite a bit. But they know more about honeybees than they did when I got there today, so my work is done.

And by "work", I mean doing the waggle dance.

Sebastian's teacher even gave me the backhanded compliment of telling the kids that I had done so well, she might even let me do more of the programs next year. (She only opted to have me do 4 of the 7.) Can't wait!

Happy Mother's Day!

To those of you who are mothers already and those of you who hope to one day have your own child to repeatedly kick your foot throughout your Mother's Day lunch. This sort of thing entirely makes up for it, though:

Dear mom,
Thank you for giving me life and taking good care of me. I love you. Happy Mother's Day.

Sincerely,
Sebastian

Ready for a shocker?

Last night, Jeremy and I went out for our anniversary. Not that shocking yet, but bear with me. We went to a real restaurant where there were no children in sight, no burritos on the menu, and there definitely weren't any meals that came with a toy.

How we managed to have a date where we didn't feel like teenagers is anyone's guess. (We'll ignore that my top came from Forever 21.)

And if I were to be entirely truthful, which we all know is difficult for me, the only real reason we were in a real restaurant is that my mother sent us some random gift certificates to 5 places we've never been, including 2 in Wilmington. We decided to head over that way because spending an hour driving would ensure that we would not somehow end up at home before the children's bedtime.

So we had a real meal with soup, salad, an entree, and the worst chocolate cake I've ever had. Then, we drove slowly past the bowling alley long enough to realize we had no intention of going there. Then we drove over to Keene, decided against seeing any of the movies and then went to the outdoor ice cream place for a "Fancy Frappe"--- with a bunch of teenagers.

We're working on it. One day we'll actually be old and boring and we'll dream of mini-golf and Burger King dates.

T-ball terror

See that boy o' mine? He is trouble with a capital T-ball. Granted, the children only had one practice before their first game because 2 out of 3 were rained out. And granted, getting Kindergartners and First graders to play ball is like herding cats. But our kid was out of control. During the 2 inning game he:

• was incapable of staying in the position the coach assigned him.
• missed a ball headed straight for his assigned position because he wasn't there. Twice.
• ran for every ball, no matter where it was headed.
• tried several times to offer other children $5 to let him have the ball. ($5 he does not have.)

But he had a good time, which is clearly the point since every child bats each inning and no one keeps score. And he did know where the bases were. I'll give him that.

I was almost going to whine...

But I won't. We all know you don't want to hear me drone on for the millionth time about too much volunteer work for school when we all know what the definition of the word "volunteer" is. So I promise I won't tell you that I'm in the middle of 8 days of volunteer overload which just had 2 more tasks piled into it. Mum's the word.

Instead, I'll give you the good news. The good news is that today the bill came for the sewer pipe (I know bills are not good news, just be patient) and if the insurance company holds up their end of the bargain, I will be paying about $1000 less than my original prediction. Can I get a "Hallelujah!" over here? It's still more than the $0 I would like to be spending, but it is no longer terrifying me.

I love you, Mr. Jeremy!

Nine years ago today, in unseasonably sweltering heat, I wed my best friend in the whole wide world. Two kids, one minivan, and a house with a broken sewer pipe later, we're still going strong.

It doesn't get much better than that. (Especially now that the pipe is fixed.)

That boy has got problems

While my darling cousin Emily was here this weekend, she got to witness the bizarre spectacle that is The Children Across the Street. She was already horrified by their constant staring in our direction, the incessant hellos from the youngest girl, and the swinging of wooden baseball bats at each other-- you know, the things that have become a normal day in our neighborhood. And then we saw the absolute icing on the cake.

You may recall that part of my new fence needed to come down to allow for the excavation of our sewer pipe (an event that quickly became the talk of the town). Two dowels and one post were taken down, and to do this, the workmen removed 2 galvanized nails and then left them stuck in the top of one of the remaining posts.

While I watched from the kitchen, the middle child from across the street, an 8 year old boy who when asked how to spell his name told me, "I have yearned many things, but I have never yearned to spell my own name," wandered over to inspect the newly poured cement of the sidewalk. Then I saw him touching the nails in the fence post. As my cousin and I exchanged a disdainful look, I realized that the nails were no longer in the post. I called out the door, "G-----, did you take those nails?"

"What?"

"I said, did you take those nails? From the fence?"

And that's when he pulled them out of his mouth.

A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again... at least until next year

The Flapdoodlers had their annual "Running of the Bulls" party in honor of their 2 Tauruses, Flapman and Little Miss Flap. This party involves drinking the strongest margaritas ever and then running up their dead end street into the woods and back for a total of a half mile.

Myopic bookworm that I am, I am not made for running. Hell, I'm no good at track and field video games. It is not my sport.

It should be no surprise that I came in last. And I mean dead last. As in "I almost died" last.

I could blame the margarita, or the maker of the margarita, but the full responsibility lies with the drinker of the margarita who had the awesome foresight to wear her low rise pants which are perpetually falling down and a pair of Chucks. I was somehow completely unprepared for the fact that the other people were going to be wearing running shorts and running shoes and, you know, run for fun and stuff.

Well, there's always next year (when I will be sitting on the sidelines with my margarita cheering everyone else on).