Tuesday, February 24, 2004

A Half-Day in the Life

I love reading blogs because they let me get in someone else's skin for a while. Jump on in mine for half a day. You might want to wear your grubby jeans and bring some hand wipes.


4:15 a.m. Wake up to baby crying. Cringe in bed with husband while baby "cries it out". We are determined to unspoil him, as we have created a bad habit of wee hour milk cocktail parties.
4:35 a.m. Baby goes back to sleep.
5:15 a.m. I go back to sleep.
6:22 a.m. Wake up to daughter calling for "Mama". Unprecedented late hour. If I hadn't lost that hour in the middle of the night, I might feel rested. Warm cup of milk for her, warm bottle for baby, who is now also awake, change night diapers and get children dressed for the day.
7:00 a.m. Breakfast, prepared by my husband. Coffee, blessed coffee, eggs and toast for us, Cheerios with yogurt for the shorter set. Eat while spoonfeeding my son.
7:10 a.m. Phone rings. Husband and I look at it with dread. Early hour phone calls, like late night phone calls, never bring good news. It's my cousin with bad news about her partner of 15+ years. Just past his 45th birthday, he went to the hospital with chest pain. The cause: a softball-sized lung tumor. Yesterday, he went for surgery to have it removed. Except that when they opened him up, after cutting 2 ribs and breaking another 2, they found the tumor wrapped around his aorta. Inoperable. They closed him back up. He does not yet know. My cousin is 36. Their son is 4. I don't mean for this to be the "all fatal illness, all the time" blog, but the world is screaming at me: LIFE IS SHORT! so I am screaming it back. Go hug someone you love.
8:00 a.m. Clean up breakfast dishes, fold laundry, shower, dress, do hair and makeup, kiss husband goodbye, do daughter's hair, compile 6 shoes, 6 socks, and 3 jackets and get them on respective owners' bodies.
8:45 a.m. Daughter, son and I rush out, late for preschool. Drop daughter off a few minutes late, chat with some parents, pick up gift card for school's fundraising auction, lend daughter's extra coat to child who forgot his.
9:10 a.m. Return home with son, stopping to mail package at post office on the way home.
9:30 a.m - 11:00 a.m. "Quiet" time with only 1 child. Fix snack, put baby on table while I check my running eBay auctions. Email high bidders, post 4 new auctions, wrap and address 2 sold items.
11:25 a.m. Pick daughter up from preschool, arriving 5 minutes early to make up for being late at the beginning of the day. Pick up collages, fingerpaintings, crayon drawings from cubby, load everyone back into car.
11:45 - 1:00 p.m. Pound pavement for school auction, son in stroller, daughter tagging behind scuffing her heels. Spend 15 minutes talking with owner of local coffee shop while taming children attempting to run amok, leave with $5 gift certificate. Drop by ice cream shop to pick up promised donation to find owner has "stepped out" for half an hour and has not left gift certificates. Talk with taqueria employees who suggest I leave my written information about the auction. I may as well leave it in the trash can, but I leave it with them anyway. Son is screaming bloody murder in the stroller, so we go home and I make a note to return to the ice cream place another time.
1:15 p.m. Return home for lunch. Prepare pizza for everybody, even though it's high carb and I feel like a bloated beast. Let the kids watch "Dora the Explorer" from 1:30 to 2:00 while I write this blog.
That's it up until now. Is it bedtime yet?

Saturday, February 14, 2004

Roll over, boy

Last night we were getting ready to take the kids for ice cream after dinner when our across-the-street neighbor, Jon, dropped by with his energetic new puppy. They looked cute coming across the street, 6-foot-4 Jon and this tiny fuzzy puppy. It was hard to tell who was more excited, the children or the dog, as the kids were squealing and the puppy was jumping in circles and licking everything. At one point the child-dog love fest seemed to be getting out of control, and Jon leaned his large frame over and boomed "Sit!" My son took one look up at this man looming 4 feet above his head ... and sat.

Monday, February 09, 2004

Say anything

My husband reads my blog. Normally this is a good thing, it is always nice to have a reader. If a writer writes in the forest and no one is there to read it, should she really be folding laundry instead? Tonight he flipped his laptop shut with a snort - "You haven't updated your blog." Then he went to bed. So here I am, thinking of something, anything, to push that silly Quizilla entry down just a few inches.
Kids ... haven't done anything remarkably cute lately ... though the little one cracks me up because he shouts "BOB!" whenever he sees Bob the Builder and "DO-DA!" whenever he sees Dora the Explorer yet he still calls both my husband and me "Mama". Comes in handy at 3 a.m. - baby's crying "Mama!" and I just roll over and say "He means you, honey."
No news on my Mom, really, but she'll be starting her meds soon, though her disease is autoimmune and not cancer, she will still be on an anti-cancer drug, is likely to lose her hair, and will have a compromised immune system so that she might not be able to visit the grandchildren. There are a lot of unknowns, but she is a tough lady and I really do feel like it's all going to be ok.
eBay ... people are starting to get the first wave of tax rebates so it's a good time to start listing the junk you don't need. I found a thrift shop in town that is actually not totally disgusting and over the weekend I found 2 complete in the original box Fisher Price Little People sets from the '70s. I was beside myself.
Food news ... we haven't abandoned South Beach Diet but I haven't cracked the book in ages. I made a huge pot of albondigas based loosely on the linked recipe and Irish Soda Bread for dinner and let me tell you, it was carbolicious. Yeah, Mexican soup and Irish bread.
I guess that's it for now. Goodnight, dear, and everybody else too.

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

Raising the bar

Always striving for a higher level of nerdiness, I have outdone myself today by creating my own quiz at Quizilla, based on my strange infatuation with the Fisher Price Little People of my childhood, and yours, if you are say, between 25 and 40. I'm the Queen, but since I made the quiz, it should be obvious that I cheated.
The Queen
Here are your results, your Majesty, and sorry to
keep you waiting - you're the Queen!


Which Little People figure are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

And they were Googled here ...

To the person(s) who occasionally stumble upon my site looking for a recipe for Praram Tofu: If you find one, please let me know. My peanut sauce addiction is costing us a small fortune and I can't seem to make it like our local Thai restaurant.

To the person searching for "blog Jen hand me down T-shirts": Huh?

Sorry for whining about the comments the other day. I wish I hadn't.

Monday, February 02, 2004

One hand clapping

Have you ever been at a party or a work function, in a little group 4 or 5 people you don't know and when you finally get up the nerve to say something, everyone falls silent? Or, you're stuck giving one of those get-up-in-front-of-the-class type speeches, the kind that make your heart race and your mouth go dry, and you start off with a joke - and nobody laughs?
That's kind of how it feels to have all these "Comment (0)" lines at the end of my blog entries. The sound of one hand clapping: mine, waving silently and searchingly in the air, trying to find that other hand that will let the sound ring out.