Things I've Learned This Week

• Williams-Sonoma Meyer Lemon hand soap and hand lotion is totally worth the price.


• Williams-Sonoma Meyer Lemon hand soap will not, however, remove the smell of vomit from a 4 year old's favorite teddy bear.


• Being in a funk and being in a funky groove are nowhere near the same thing.


• More exercise, better food, and fresh air will not cure my funk.


• Long, funny conversations with a wonderful friend that make me late for picking up my son, will bring on a funky groove.


• In the retail world, Easter is already over.


• Sometimes, a cigarette really does help.


• Shopping for little girls is wading into a swamp of gender stereotype issues. Thank goodness I have boys.
• Toddlers will eat an entire strawberry, green parts included, if given an entire strawberry. At least mine will...

More Reading

This past week I finished the second novel in my recent book buying binge. It was Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. And once again I was surprised by loving a novel.

Pessl's reviews were all over the place for this, her first, novel. It's a bit messy, more than a bit over the top, and filled to the brim with literary allusions (most of which I'm sure I missed). But in the end I decided I liked it because it was just plain fun.

It did take me a few weeks to get through it; it's just over 500 pages, and you'd better be paying attention. Actually I'm sure I still missed quite a bit.

So I rounded out the week by reading my 3rd novel, Bones to Ashes by Kathy Reichs. I finished it in 2 days. I love a good forensic detective novel, and Reichs has delivered for me every time I've read her.

That Karma...She's a Bitch

Monkey Man called early in the day yesterday to invite me down to the University Main Gate. Our babysitter and her younger brother were going to be playing in a jazz band at 6:30 so he figured we could meet there, have a bite to eat, let the boys listen to the music. One more night I could avoid cooking dinner - great plan!

I'd been having a completely bipolar day with the boys. One minute I'm getting kisses and thinking about how I'm the luckiest woman in the whole world. The next minute I'm contemplating abandoning them at Target. I'm not terribly cruel - they'd have lots to do and plenty to eat. I was looking forward to sitting down for a few minutes and letting Monkey Man chase Quake's conversations and just literally chase Cha-Cha.

There's a small brew pub across the street from where the jazz band was playing, and Monkey Man had left work a little early to catch a beer with our babysitter's dad (with whom he works). I fight through terrible post-work, pre-party traffic, get the car parked, get the stroller and the kids together, and then contemplate how I'm going to get the whole shebang to the second floor of the brew pub where the grown-up boys are... Ah, look! There's an elevator!

Quake loves elevators. He pushes the buttons for me. We go to the second floor...

Nothing happens.

The elevator goes back to the first floor. I laugh, tell Quake someone else must have pushed the button making the elevator go down before the doors had a chance to open. We arrive on the first floor...

Nothing happens.

Quake pushes #2 again. We go up. We stop...

Nothing happens.

I tell Quake to push the "open doors" button. You guessed it...

Nothing happens.

I calmly peruse the elevator button panel looking for the call button when my phone rings. Cell service in an elevator? Now that's a miracle. It's Monkey Man, wondering where we are. I tell him we're on the elevator, that I think we might be stuck. He thinks I mean the elevator is just really slow. He pushes the button for the elevator, and...

Nothing happens!

You know it's not broke until a man can't get it to work.

I got to spend 20 minutes in an elevator with two small children I wasn't particularly fond of at the given moment. One of whom was a bit frightened, the other one starving. And me without fish crackers - bad mommy!

And then, they didn't even offer us free beers. Bastards.

Soccer is Hell

Oh, thank goodness the evil-that-is-soccer is over. Your kids love soccer? You love taking them to soccer? You love hanging out at the games and cheering on your little tyke? Good for you! Now I no longer have to pretend that I'm just like you. So far Quake has shown no interest in continuing with this experiment. Although he has been wearing his medal around the house. And to the grocery store.

I'm thinking about getting a whole batch of those suckers made up. I could give him one for every week of the summer during which I don't consider locking him out of the house. Now there's a competition I could get behind! Go team!

More Critter Love

We have a pack rat (aka woodrat). Correction - we had a pack rat. He/she/it has not come back after we destroyed the lovely abode you see here. This was in the corner on our house and the fence.

I get the weeds and the lint. And although you can't really see it in this photo, there were also lots of little cholla balls (little pieces of spine enrusted cacti). Makes perfect sense. But where the hell did it get that corn cob?

Also? We have a dog, a pretty large dog. A dog who likes to poop a few feet from this very spot. She, who almost removed my arm once when she spotted a rabbit during a walk, she apparently never noticed this.

Preschooler and Their Pets

In case you can't quite make it out, that is a plastic spider. I found it making a home for itself in the phone pocket of my purse. Do I need to point out that I almost jumped out of my skin the first time I saw it there? Do I also need to explain why, after the skin jumping incident, it remained in my purse for a good two months? If I could figure that one out I'm sure my life would make a lot more sense to me too.

Go, Team!

Yes, well, getting back into the swing of things around here has proved just a teensy bit more difficult than I had originally imagined. I've been moping through my days feeling sorry for myself because Monkey Man was so busy at work, and I'm tired, damn it!

Plus I'd been dreading the soccer-day-from-hell that had been planned for me yesterday. Quake had pictures at 10:30, then a game at noon and a game at 1pm. Two hours of soccer for a 4 year old? That's about 90 minutes more than he's interested in playing. Then Monkey Man told me he had band practice at 1. Then the nice man on the news told me it was going to be 90 degrees. Then I dissolved in a puddle of god-I-hate-being-a-soccer-mom-itis.

It was almost as bad I thought it was going to be. Monkey Man's cousin drove down from Phoenix to see Quake play so at least I had an extra hand to help with Cha-Cha (2 hours of soccer in which he is not allowed to participate is just about 120 minutes more than he's interested in watching). But the weather? Even if Quake wanted to play again, I'd tell him there was no more soccer until next November. And then I'd tell him all the parks were closed until then too. I guess it's a blessing that all he really wanted was the uniform.