Jeremy's week off by the numbers

8 number of days Jeremy was home with us

2 children's science museums visited

1 staple* inserted in Dorian's head to hold it together after a playground mishap

1.5 hours spent in emergency room to get said staple

1 cavern explored

52 degrees F inside the cavern

100 degrees F outside

1 night in a hotel

8 times we went swimming

1 pair of socks for Jeremy finally finished

2 average number of cucumbers picked from the garden each day

4 days, starting today, that Jeremy will be in Chicago on business-- feast or famine, I guess.

* Can you believe it's actually a metal staple with no discernible difference from the kind that holds papers together?! It makes me shudder every time I see it.

Yesterday was yet another dreary, cool and rainy day in a string of such days. And so it seemed a perfect day to destroy my clean and pretty new dining room by filling it with all the crap from the laundry room and painting. My bogus trip to IKEA has left me with no organizational unit to fill the newly painted laundry room, but that is neither here nor there.
Gone are the weirdly mustardy beige walls and ancient linoleum floor, replaced by three white walls and one pink wall and a floor that I can't decide if it is shabby chic or just plain shabby. Which ever it may be, it is better than the crumbling, blue, water-damaged linoleum that was there before. And this means that I finally get to use my washing machine and dryer instead of the old ones that came with the house! (Well, after I have Jeremy help me move them from the workshop...)

Now I get to drag Dorian around with me today on a quest to find some appropriate storage furniture and a work table.

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And in totally unrelated news-- I had this conversation with Dorian a couple of days ago:

Dorian: Mom, you're the greatest woman in town!

Me: You think?!

Dorian: Well... maybe Miley Cyrus is.

The fact that Miley does not live anywhere near our town, probably has never heard of our town and quite possibly will never visit our town did not matter to dear DeeDee. So, currently, I have a 4.5 year old obsessed with Miley Cyrus and a 7.5 year old who is in love with a video game character. Lord have mercy on me this summer vacation!

Laziest blogger/knitter ever

Considering it has been almost a month since I posted, you probably weren't expecting to ever find another post here. But here I am, with very little to show you. The camera gets almost no use these days. We're busy, but not with much you'd want to look at.

I've been hardly knitting at all. I am not working on Sundays this May, so there goes a whole day of knitting time. And I missed last week's circle and will also miss this week's. Couple that with watching a lot of movies that require reading, and the knitting has slowed considerably. The other day I remembered that I had been working on Jeremy's first sock while watching the absolute worst movie during February vacation. And here we are, fast approaching summer vacation, and I've only just finished the heel on number 2.

On the right is a sweater vest requested by Sebastian to have an alien theme. So far, you can see UFOs and planets. There are also alien faces and rocket ships to come. Assuming I ever pick up the needles again...

Mayday

Yesterday I got to do my nature program for Sebastian's class for a whopping hour and a half whch was supposed to include a walking field trip down the road to a large brook. Unfortunately, it was a rainy, cold, miserable day so we were only able to go behind the school to a smaller stream. This meant I had a lot more time to fill, as about 45 minutes was scheduled just for walking.

So after I did my puppet show which featured a mayfly nymph among other things (like a coat hanger and a toilet plunger), I told the children about mayflies. How when they emerge as adults, they only have one day to live, so they mate and lay eggs and that's it. "What would you do if you could only be an adult for one day before you died?" I asked.

And as depressing as it was that all the girls save one* wanted to go to the mall, and all the boys wanted to play video games, one little sociopath came up with a real doozy. He, too, wanted to play video games but in order to do so he planned to:

"Go to the store and buy all the video games I want with a check I know I don't have money for, but the won't know that until after I'm dead anyway."

I'm not sure I want to know what is going on in his life that inspired that comment.

*She wanted to clean her house, which made her mother who was accompanying us hang her head in dismay. But at least she was being thoughtful of those she was leaving behind.

Mental Health Day

Jeremy's boss decided he needed a mental health day on Friday, but it really turned out to be one for me. And not just because I had had 2 kids home for spring vacation* for 6 days at that point either.

No, I took the opportunity to strong-arm Jeremy into helping me paint the dining room-- an event I've been waiting for for too long. (Note that this post was written one year ago exactly.)

We picked white for the dining room, since all the other rooms have color, and my dishes are all different colors and I didn't want too much clashing. And my cousin pointed out that I don't want to have a "clown house." Unfortunately, all I could say when it was done was, "It's so... white." So we hung up our artwork, and it is better. Now we just need an appropriately sized table.

And lest it seem finished, I have this little reminder until I make it to the hardware store to buy one of those silly plates to cover the chimney flue:
Now I just need to do the laundry room... I've got the paint-- I just need the time.

*During vacation, we went to an artist's workshop and Sebastian's picture was taken for the paper.

The whole tooth and nothing but the tooth

Sebastian lost his 6th tooth on Friday.  He still hadn't left the 5th one he lost months ago for the tooth fairy yet, deciding instead to keep one for himself.  Now he had 2 teeth in two of the little tooth necklaces that come from school when your mouth starts falling apart there.

And for the first time, he questioned the magic.  "Maybe the tooth fairy doesn't really exist." When pressed, he wasn't sure where the money might come from or where the teeth might go.  Santa Claus made more sense than tooth fairies and Easter bunnies, he decided.  (Even though he claimed to have caught a glimpse of said bunny last Sunday.)  So I told him about what happened when I was his age and thought the same thing.

I decided to wait up for the fairy.  My tooth was in a film canister under my pillow, under my head, and there was no way she (or whoever was masquerading as the tooth fairy) was going to get past me.  I struggled to stay vigilant, and in the dark I checked to be sure I could hear the rattle of my little tooth in the plastic.  But it was full of coins!  And so I was convinced, for a little while longer anyway.  Sebastian pointed out that I may have dozed off briefly, but seemed to reconsider.

He didn't want to (or forgot) to leave his teeth for the fairy on Friday night, but remembered to do it last night.  After discovering the dollar he received last time still folded neatly inside his tooth pouch, he took his little calcified treasures upstairs to rest on the pillow next to his head.

Cue anxious whispering by his parents:  

"Do you have $2?"

"No!  Do you?"

"I think I have $1 in my wallet.  What should we do?"

"We'll just have to 'borrow' some from their wallets, I guess."

But then we went back to playing Mario and totally forgot.

This morning, more anxious whispering by me at 7:45am to my sleeping husband:

"Did you remember to be the tooth fairy?!"

Shit.  Now what?  The kids are up.  Sebastian has by now discovered that the tooth fairy has neglected to visit.  All wallets are downstairs with the children.  Panic! Panic!

Piggy banks!  Those are upstairs.  Who says the tooth fairy only brings bills?  She certainly didn't when I was a kid.  

Whose stupid idea was it anyway to have the kids take their change to the CoinStar machine?!  (Mine.)  The total from the 2 banks was a whopping $1.76.  There was another 15 cents on our dresser.  Jeremy told me to check his underwear drawer, but that only yielded his neckties, an "I heart Styx" button and some marbles.  (It's better not to ask.)

Now I had to sneak downstairs to get his wallet with the lonely bill, quietly put the excess change back in the banks, exchange the money for teeth and somehow not get caught.  Success!

Being the impatient person I am, when I returned downstairs some 45 minutes later I asked if the tooth fairy had come.  "She didn't," Sebastian sadly replied.  "She forgot."  

"That's not possible.  I have heard of her having trouble in bad weather, but not forgetting entirely.  Are you sure she didn't come?"

"Yes.  I checked when I woke up and my teeth were still there and there was no money."

"Hmm.  That's odd.  I wonder if she came and saw there were 2 teeth and had to go back for more money.  She probably was only expecting one tooth.  I'm sure she'll come."

"That's a good idea, Mom.  I did hold onto that other tooth for a long time."

Lo and behold, when he checked a few minutes later, the money was there... but short one dime.  Argh!  Will this nightmare never end?  I told him to check his bed and retrace his steps from his room to where the tooth pouch was now on the dining table, scrambled into the kitchen to get a dime from my wallet to throw on the floor next to the table and vowed not to worry about it when Jeremy wondered how I would explain it when Sebastian finds the original dime later.

Seen and heard

Seen:

While driving to school this morning, I was behind a station wagon with a "Baby on Board" sign affixed to the back window. As it was turning into the school parking lot, its driver threw a cigarette butt out of the window.

Apparently I am expected to have more of a stake in that baby's safety than the parent is.

Heard:

Dorian was very excited by the prospect of finding Easter eggs filled with "malted meatballs."