Too much of a good thing.

I think it will be a long long long time before Nbear tries this again:

a cinnamon spiked shot of peppermint extract.

whew. took his breath clear away. (but he sure smells nice.)

Toe Jammin'

"um. jazz?"

"yes."

"what are you.... harvesting from your in between your toes?"


pause. pause. pause.



"It's sweeeeet."

My Year So far....

I've given up using shampoo, going full-tilt dirty hippie.

(Sinda may have a pit-stick making party soon too. We're in this stink together. It's just a matter of time before Lisa succumbs. peer pressure baby!)


AND

I've bought myself a $50 toothbrush.

Because apparently I didn't get the memo. Everyone I encounter lately is using one.



***************************


We also had a nice holiday with lots of snow at the mountains of Nana & Papa. Smith and Nbear worked diligently on a very elaborate, multi-leveled, tunneled, throned, snow fort. It even had a roof in places. I hear snowballs were tossed. We did get to ski a little bit, and not just down the driveway...




We hacked down our own tree and hauled it back down the hill (yeah. that looks like a hill...) on a sled. It was a perfect tree.



We watched the snowplow clear the driveway. Often.




Gingerbread houses were made (and picked at by little fingers.)




We were invaded by Christmas-themed bug boys.




Happy New Year Ya'll!


.

A little from Column A, A little from Column B

A+) Nbear lost his two front teeth and just in time for Christmas! My, how many times have we heard that song? Not nearly enough! How often does that work out -- both front teeth AND Christmas?! It's like Jupiter & Venus aligning! (didn't ya'll see that?)

A-) When Nbear lost the first front tooth - it left the root bud behind. Firstly, I didn't realize just how absolutely positively squeamish I am about a loose tooth. I could barely look at him with it just dangling there. Then he lost the tooth, but the root was not quite ready so it left a "bloody stump" behind. Oh yeah. There were no night-time kisses for awhile. until it... just dissolved...



B+) Lisa came to visit for the grand spanking opening of Mr. Craig's latest adventure in well-tailored white pants! And I got to shake things up with Sinda and smack some things down with Dawn. No picture could capture the WHOMP! of that rolling pin crushing ice for drinks. It still scares me.




B-) I missed getting to go see the new Bond movie with Lisa (and the 18 other people who almost got kicked out the movie theatre because of those lovely white pants) as I was Blogging From Bed with the flu. Both Smith & I were kaput. The children however were fine. We woke up blearly and neither could summon the effort that it would take to get the children off to school and out of our hair. So they stayed home. Here's what I vaguely remember thinking that day:

- it's really really windy

- there sure are a lot of naked people selling stuff in dwell. it's a shelter magazine, does sex really sell everything?

- how much wind would it take to blow something off of the house

- spaced (the british TV series) is the best thing to watch while ill with the flu

- metal roofs are noisy

- i wish we could actually watch spaced but the children are around

- sesame sticks do not smell good on someone else's breath. ever.

thankfully the children, those self-sufficient marvels that they are, kept to themselves (for the most part, there was that run in with the sesame stick breath). They fed themselves and took every single multiple-pieced toy apart and played the heck out of it. missing (oh thank the heavens) was the flooding, the shampoo abuse, the toilet paper wasting and the rock writing on the car events of the last two months. There was one moment of silence though, it must have been 2 minutes long but Smith and I simultaneously popped our heads up listen. ??? and then back to playing it was. and to sleep. ah.



C+) Jbird wore this bucket on his head for an entire day. It fit him perfectly. I have no idea where it came from. On the other side, it read "Sol." N decided that J's face needed some extra flare with markers to finish the look. Who else looks this good with a bucket on their head?



C-) There is no minus to looking this cute with a bucket on your head.




D+) I got to see the babies! My beloved nieces and nephew are sofa king adorable. 7 lbers now too! How awesome is that?!

D-) I didn't actually get to touch the babies. I was over the flu, but was coming down with a cold. Drat! Uncle Tommy & Aunt Lynne were the best though - they loaded up and brought those little buggers over so we could at least peer at them through the back of the sneeze-guard back window. Did you know that 3 baby car seats can fit into the back of an extended cab Chevy pickup? Now you know. Jbird & Nbear got hoisted up into the bed of the truck to peer through at the sleeping wonders. J looks up with big eyes and proclaims: "WHOA! That's a lot of BABIES!" tail on the donkey that one.


E+) We sold our old house! Yeah! One less mortgage to pay. One less electric bill. One less everything! And new neighbors!

E-) They finally finished building the warehouse that backs up behind our fence at the new house. The parking lot lights are... how shall we say... flood-lighty?


F+) Thanksgiving!! One more year that I wasn't responsible for the bird. My dad, of course, as usual, was on the mark with the bird. I tried to help with the side dishes and the pie, but my mom is the master. I think I just got in the way. The best part of the Thanksgiving meal for me actually comes the next morning. I have pie for breakfast. And nobody tries to stop me!

My mom also sets a mean table.



I think my family is a tiny bit japanese.






F-) My dad gets jipped because his birthday is on Thanksgiving. So he bakes the bird and then has to blow out the candles (oh, and we didn't even have those) on the pumpkin pie. Sorry dad.


G+) I found Tina!
G-) I found her on Facebook.

In your eye

I have been dealing with an eye infection for the last two months. It is not the usual variety of itchiness, redness etc. It is really just a red bump on the inside of the lid. Sometimes it bugs me, sometimes it doesn't.

The eye doctor described it in great detail with a lot of names until it dawned on me what he was really saying: "you have a pimple in your eye." Given my acne-rich history I shouldn't have been surprised. His first remedy was to run lots of hot water on it and rub it. If that failed, he had a prescription for me.

So I've been on the running the hot water and gently massaging course for close to 3 weeks now. Guess what? Now I have two pimples in my eye. So I went to the pharmacy to fill the script. Guess what? $98 smackeroos.

I bet if I had eye pimples in Canada the eye drops wouldn't cost as much.

Happy New Year! Poop!

Leave it to me to start my very first blog entry of 2008 with poop. I feel so dooce. (scroll down, she's got a category just for poop.)


Nbear has started a spanish class and it's one of those classes that is 40 minutes long - which I'm sure is just perfect scholastically, but logistically, it's a bit of a pain. As in, it is not long enough for me to actually GO anywhere and do something, nor am I at leisure to pack a book to entertain myself in the car as I have a 2 year old kicking the back of my seat and hollering.

Luckily, there is a playground nearby. So with some relief I released N to his class and wound my way out of the labyrinth of a building to find the playground. I spotted something that resembled a bathroom, but J was fighting me to get outside to the playground. So about 5 minutes in, I'm the park mom totally on the phone when Jmonkey gets "the look" and "the pose." Of course I have left his spares in the car. So we must walk forever back to the car. He waddles and complains.

At the car, I remember (with a smack to my head) that I have no plastic bags and no fresh underwear (that's another story there, but much less interesting.) Alas. At the very least, I have wipes and some pants. But then I take off his pants and his underwear and I'm trying to locate the poop before it falls on a vital part of the car and I can't find it. I'm shaking things and shaking things and nada. I even bother to look in his shoes.

"J? Where did your poop go?"

"The sidewalk."

ah. okay. The case of the mystery poop solved!

Of course, now I'm in a quandary. I have no idea WHERE and no means for removal. sigh. And then my 40 minutes are up and we retrieve Nbear who then must go explore the playground too. At the end of that, we hike back to the car, having almost forgotten the poop. Until. I spot a large object on the sidewalk and think it must be a big, muddy rock. And as I get closer, I realize, oh no, that's NOT a rock, that's THE poop. Which is then pointed out by my proud 2 year old.

It was HUGE. Grapefruit sized.

And all I could do is keep walking. Would someone else just assume it was dog poo or is there something that screams: "I came from a human!" about it? And does that make it worse? Is human poop on the sidewalk worse than dog poop? I want to say yes, but can't figure out why. So I just left it. And I have this feeling that karma will return the favor to me; but part of me (knowing just how much poop I've cleaned up in the last 5 years) wants to believe that I am just facilitating the karma for someone else. I sincerely hope that it's not any of you.

Beastie.

Since we returned from Thanksgiving, we've been suffering with a beastie. At first we heard the little scritching on the wall behind the sink in the soon-to-be demo'd bathroom. I had to remind dear protectorate that taking a sledge hammer to the wall to try to "chase it out and get it" was not wise when a contractor was not waiting in the wings to do the repairs. Then additional evidence of this guest/pest was discovered and

a sticky trap was set.

we caught a roach.

a snapping trap was set with banana (it's favored treat when venturing forth in the house).

nada.

the trap was set with peanut butter (a trick from my brother.)

the trap itself was nibbled upon.

"it's like he's mocking us!" dear protectorate announces the following morning. And I shook my head with every memory of every movie/joke/foible of man trying to catch a mouse. The mouse is always more clever than the man.

[interlude here where I began calling rodent ridder folks. Those that bothered to call me back where not available until after New Year's. Those that did scared me with prices, rattled off statistics of how many rats were probably REALLY nesting in my wall, set up an appointment and then failed to show up or call me. *Sigh* and here's where I would link to my soon to be written diatribe against plumbers...]


chocolate was added to the mix (thanks dawn.)

And then, dear protectorate, the man at my side who calmly slept through every whimper of night waking for the last FIVE YEARS heard the little imp get itself stuck in the trap and the deed was completed and disposed of in the wee hours of the morning.

ah. This is one of those really happy times when I'm happy for dear protectorate. (even if his hearing has proved to be entirely selective.)

Something else to gross you out

The other night I was awoken at 12:22. Not by a child. Not by any neighborhood activity. Not by Smith's errant phone beeping an "important" calendar reminder.

Nope. By a cockroach. In my bed. ON ME.
I bolted out of the bed (understatement of the year) and watched it scurry over and around the other occupants of the bed before disappearing over the other side.

Perhaps the worst part of the story, a testament to how totally out of sorts I was, is that after it was out of sight, I crawled back into bed.