FRIDAY CONFESSIONS

I plan on much more confessing to be done next Friday. I'll be in the throws of a family wedding and I have high hopes of saying/doing things that were awesome at the time, but possibly not in the best taste and prudence over all. This week, not so much to report. Sickness and a house plagued by it, does not provide for much more than a bad attitude and a hope for the ability to squash cheerful people like bugs.

Let's see, oh! Here's a good one. I ordered a certain product online and did not tell Mike I ordered it. The item cost over $200 and making a purchase of that size and not telling each other is just not done around here. But it was a selfish, needless item and one I was pretty sure Mike would not agree with me using the product in the first place. So I didn't say anything. A teeny weeny lie of omission. WELL. Of course he found out. He freaked out. He gathered all debit cards and credit cards from my person, sternly lectured about how we make decisions together and this was just useless and not even good for me. He was pretty steamed. I was appropriately contrite and really did feel pretty badly about it. Sneaky is not my motive operendi. I like being an open book. So this transgression bothered me far more than it bothered Mike. But none the less, he was pretty pissed. It was a good lesson to all of us that if we have to hide something we are doing or that we want from our significant other, then it's not the pricey item that's the problem. It's all about how you communicate and value each other as a couple. I let him stew for a day and one night and peppered his stew with I'm Sorries and I was wrongs. After the second sun had set on his disgust I told him he'd need to pull his head out of his butt now and get over it. He was glad frankly that a truce had been called because he's not very good remembering things let alone why he is mad (an emotion I am thankful he feels so much less than most) A truce has been established and joy has settled back over the land.

Long story short, just maintain full disclosure with your man. It's a good practice and one that I am going to try and be more faithful to in the future.

More confessions to come. (Hopefully of raiding the groomsmen rooms, jumping into the hotel pool at midnight and letting some cute groomsman get to third base at the very least. hubba hubba Until then...

2+2=4

I'm not much a fan of formulas. I don't like prediction and for a to always proceed b followed by their trustee amigo c . I like a little unpredictability in life. For example, I hate red roses and broke up with a serious boyfriend one time over them because if I figured he didn't know by now that I hated cliche's then he wasn't trying hard enough. I like movies with twists and turns. Who Done It's are my favorite where you don't know the killer until the last few pages. I have often said I would love to be a spy but have too big of a mouth and could never stand up to torture. I loved when in college and I thought we were super broke, that Mike surprised me with a secret savings account he had been putting money into for a new computer. I like to change things up now and then, go for the unexpected. This is why today turned out to be so incredibly lovely.

I thought I knew how today would go for sure. I mean,two sick kids with scarlet fever and strep throats no less. Their mother, me, also sick with the same. Their Father unable to take off from work. Not a grandparent or helper in sight. It was going to be me in charge all day long and I knew it was going to be another tough day. I figured a lot of holding of hot, smelly, sticky children, administering of antibiotics, Popsicles and food requests for stuff that doesn't hurt my "froat". A lot of whining about being hot/sick/bored/tired from all sides and by the end of the day me seriously wondering why I paid $30,000 to modern medicine for the opportunity to procreate. But see, it didn't go down like that at ALL.

At 7:45 Katie awoke to a desperate need for hot chocolate and a gooey ham and cheese croissant because it was soft and would not hurt her throat. I laid there staring at her eager face. "Come On Mom. Get your jeans on and let's go pick food up from La Bou." The fact that she knows about picking up breakfast foods from French boulengeries at age 5 is a different story for a different day. The fact that she knows these particular croissants have been my single breakfast weakness since I had one at 10 years old is just about paying attention. "Go see if Jessica really wants one too". Not long passed before two ratty hair, stinky kids were jumping on my bed begging for warm croissants, french ham and melted guyere along with shaved belgium chocolate melted into fresh dairy milk and steamed to the perfect temperature. My kids are foodies. I grabbed my jeans, stuck on a hat, told them to put on their warmest footie pajamas and we headed out. I wondered about the wisdom of doing this when we were sick but we had been not hungry for a lot of days now. I think I was just overcome that there existed a food option out there that sounded good to all three of us and I could go get it without having to comb my hair. I called the order in so it would be all ready and all I had to do was pay and lug a bag of warm croissants and three cups of not too hot, not too cold chocolate to my van which was parked in front of the shop. I had eyes on the van at all times as the whole place is glass fronted and there were like two pepole there just in case you were going to leave me a hate comment that I let the girls stay in the car.

We were happy to have food that tasted and went down easily. We ate much less than usual as we were still not feeling great but it was still a far better cry than the bowl of milk soaked wheaties I thought was in our breakfast plans for the morning. Score one for Katie, her bright ideas and excellent palette.

I hunkered down with a book actually entitled "Happy Ever After". Not my normal thriller genre. It was actually the forth book in a quartet about four best friends who grow up playing pretend wedding day. Fast forward to adulthood and they form a business in which they plan and execute lavish weddings in Greenwich Connecticut. The first book as the best friend/wedding photographer meeting a groovy lit professor and having her "Picture Perfect" love story. The next features the best friend/florist getting her Bed of Roses. The third installment has the best friend/pastry chef Savoring The Moment as she falls in love with a guys she's known her whole life. Now in this one the best friend/wedding coordinator gets her Happy Ever After with a tough no nonsense mechanic who happened to be educated at Yale. I normally do not like these types of books. They annoy me. But when I am sick, I like the comfort of the simplicity of when love runs smoothly and the guy gets the girl. I put on the free babysitter known as the PBS Sproutlette channel and the girls were snuggled up with me with their own 5 year old version of formula stories. We normally never spend time like this. But today it was called for. And it was so nice. We had long conversations about Uncle Steve and Auntie Vanessa's wedding coming up. They wanted to know what the deal was and why the heck they weren't the flower girls because don't they know "we are EXCELLENT flower girls cuz we have TOTALLY DONE IT BEFORE!" I explained that there were two nice little girls were hadn't met yet who hadn't gotten a turn to be flower girls yet so Auntie Vanessa is going to give them a turn this time but that they still had a very important job. They had to check out Uncle Steve before he went into his reception and make sure he was perfect from head to toe. They were the groom checkers. And they are highly excited about this new job. They spent the rest of the day making ghetto gifts to give out at the reception to people that are coming to the wedding. We shared popsicles, talk about cigarettes and how they are bad, new rules about the handling of aluminum cans. The most exciting news of the day was Jessica has an officially loose tooth. Katie asked me if she would get money too when Jessica looses her tooth and the tooth fairy comes. I told her the Tooth Fairy is going to pay Jessica for her tooth and then whatever Jessica does with the money is her business. It was not even a question. They are going to share the proceeds from Tooth Fairy Collections 5050 no matter who's tooth it is. I was surprised but in a good way.
It was a day where I really got to see the love parts of our family and how we are happy to take care of one another. I did my fair share of taking care of them but they took care of me just as much, fetching water, medicine and reminding me to rest. All in all, it was a nice little day. The kind you don't remember but then, years later, you wish you could have back.

Love In the Time of Cholora

Today was just one of those days. The kind that makes you wish you crawled back under the covers and never came out. We've been battling sickness in one form or another around here for the past three weeks. Today was the day in which the doctor I live with tells me that he needs to be a "dad" and I need to take them into the doctor and be seen. Given our crazy temps/rash/sore throats...I bit the bullet and took us in. We have scarlet fever and strep throat. Yay Team! As soon as he said scarlet fever my mind went to Beth and Jo March and their death scene on Beth's bed because she just had to go and look after those stupid Hummel babies and got scarlet fever. I was assured it is not as serious today and we have great medicines to fight it blah blah blah. It didn't stop me from being a wreck. And my poor Mother In Law broke her foot in three places and Steve gets married next week and she will most likely be in a wheelchair. i'm so tired, the keys are blurry and I better tuck in....


uh,turns out scarlet fever is no fun.

Say What?

I don't want to forget some of the funny things my kids are saying right now. Sometimes we'll be having a conversation and I feel like looking around for hidden cameras because I can't believe the stuff that comes out of their mouth. (Sentimental, braggy mommy rubbish ahead...proceed with caution)

• Jessica starts everything she has to tell me with the following sentence. "Mom, I have some good news and some bad news." Then she tells me how many of each she has. "Mom, I have one bad news and two good news-es" Today, this was the good & bad news. "Mom, the bad news is that if we put the picture I drew for Katie to thank her for being a good nurse to me while I am sick on the dresser, we can't put our fan on number two or it will blow off. The good newses are that we can put the picture on our dresser with either no fan on at all or on speed one."


• The girls have an alarm clock on their dresser that goes off at 7:05 a.m. They begged for this alarm clock so they can know when to get up and get ready for school. Katie tells me all the time "Mom, you would think that the sound the alarm makes in the morning would be a happy sound but it's not. It just reminds me that I am very very very sooooo tired!"


• Both girls are always talking about their enjury level. Me: "Girls, I need you to pick up your play room." Them "Mom, we are so tired we just don't have enough enjury in our legs to do it." Or, another example Them: "Mom, I ate all my dinner. I'm sure gonna have lots of enjury now."


• Lasternight. Even Mike and I say lasternight now. It's a combination of yesterday and last night. Everynight when we tuck them into bed, they say something like "Mom, we went to sleep good lasternight didn't we?" or "you read a whole book lasternight, can we have two books tonight?"


• They play this computer game called World of Zoo. If you have 4 or 5 year olds, go get it. They will love it. You get to be a zoo keeper and take care of all the animals. There are zebras, monkeys, kuaula bears, giraffes, big cats and pandas. The girls get to name the animals, pick what they'll look like along with the color of the animal. (pink and white giraffes!) Then they get to take care of the animals. They earn love points from their animals if they do a good job. They feed, bathe, play with, train, exercise, groom and heal their animals. The animals come up to the screen and kiss them and give them love points when they do a good job. They sit in front of the computer and talk to these animals like they are totally real. Jessica: "Hi sweetie -pie my favorite zebra how are you this morning. Okay girl, it's okay, it's just me. Here I brought you an apple. I knew you'd like that. yes, yes, I love you too. Okay girl, where's little lady? Oh, there she is!! Hi little lady..." and it goes on and on. It seems sort of sad and pathetic because they don't have a real pet and they want one so badly. And I'm feeling myself starting to break down and think about dogs again. But once we got past the guilt that they are taking care of imaginary computerized pets, we noticed that they are having an absolute ball. They love it so much and it's so cute.


• It was so sad/cute, on Halloween they gave out candy because they had already gotten so much candy. We explained that since Halloween was on Sunday this year, that it would be a good idea for us to think of something we could do for our neighbors instead of just focusing on getting as much candy as possible. They were totally on board for it. They made 44 ghosts out of tootsie roll pops and white kleenex and black yarn. Then, Katie cut up her extra nice drawing paper into four squares per sheet and drew a Halloween picture for the trick or treaters. She had over 25 pictures ready by 6pm Halloween night. I gave them the big basket that normally holds our fruit and onions on our counter top. They filled it with all their treats. I let them put on their kitty ears and I drew whiskers on their faces. We talked as a family about how normally on Halloween, people pass by our house but nobody is home to give them candy because we are out trick-or-treating. This year, we were deciding together as a family that we'll make the sacrifice of getting candy in order to be here to serve the kids in our neighborhood by giving them candy, along with a craft that we worked very hard to make. They were totally pumped. (Brainwash your kids much? yeah, me too) In between trick or treaters they sat on the love seat looking out the window onto the porch. They would yell, "someone is HEEEERE!!!" as they flew off the couch to answer the door before the people could ring the bell. I can't even begin to think about what sort of thoughts my neighbors had when they went through their Halloween candy and found a picture drawn by a 5 year old and a crumpled piece of Kleenex tied (barely) around a tootsie roll pop. We are THAT family. The whackadoos down the street that put a used Kleenex in your trick or treat bag. BUT in my defense. The girls said they had a better time doing that than trick or treating and asked if they could do that next year too.
• Mike and the girls have a new tradition at the park. They slide down the slide and he pours a pixie stick in their mouth. The rules are they can't slow down to catch it and he had to stand in the same place each time. He said they love it because pixie stick dust was going everywhere...in their hair, eyes, mouth, ear etc. He said it was the most fun they've had in a long time.
• Jessica told me that she learned at school that there are things you should say to people and things you shouldn't say. Jessica" like you SHOULD say you are nice, be my friend, I will help you, I like your shirt, you are nice and good job. What you SHOULDN'T say is you are fat, you are ugly or go to HELL." And there's where the title of my post today came from. Because in that moment I turned to her and said "say WHAT?"