To Answer Knit-Tech's Question...

Time to breathe?

I don't. Unfortunately, I do seem to have time to eat. I always used to joke that if I ever got my dream to stay at home writing, someone would need a backhoe and a power winch to get me out of the house.

Uhm, anyone know where we can rent a backhoe?

Okay-- not that bad yet, but I am feeling as svelte as a manatee, so I guess it's a good thing I've been going back to the gym, isn't it? (Although I felt really bad, because I forgot about my class time and I had to take back a chance to go watch my neighbor's kid when she went in to get her ultrasound. I hate it when I double book things--you'd think, once again, that it wouldn't come up at the moment, but this stay-at-home thing is NOT as boring as people make it out to be.)

Oh--hey. I got an interesting missive in e-mail today. It's time to sign everyone up for soccer season again. As Zoomboy would say, "The hora! Oh my God, the hora!"

He doesn't really know what "hora" is--but he knows Dad says that whenever he loses something and has a complete world-screeching-to-a-halt meltdown over a five-cent toy he's not going to remember in fifteen minutes, so he assumes it's something we should take very seriously.

And speaking of things you wish you could unsay in front of your children, in case any of you ever meet Squish, if someone does something wrong in traffic, be sure to call them a "demented biach", because she already knows what THAT means. (That way you don't have to use any of the heavy duty traffic words, right?)

BTW, the dog, with her geriatric digestive system, has been trying to kill me.

I told Chicken this, and then went on to explain that I was starting to be able to guess who had fed her what based on the impurities in the sulfur bouquet she emanated, and Chicken started laughing so hard that she got me going.

You know that laughter that takes over your bodily functions until something has to go?

I almost killed my daughter with laughter when I broke wind in the middle of that conversation. I did. There we were, laughing about the poor old dog, and there was the buck snort that rattled the windows.

As Chicken convulsed and nearly fell off the rolling chair, I walked out of the room, saying with as much dignity as I could possibly muster, "Just remember, you may have been able to hear that one, but after what the dog's been doing, you'll never be able to smell it."

And then she really would have fallen out of the chair, but it had it the back of the wall by then and supported her weight just fine. Yup, me and the dog, just sitting in the house, creating toxic waste. Oughtabealaw!

Anyway, about the picture on the top-- last week was National Reading Week, with our favorite Seussian icon, The Cat in the Hat. Zoomboy has caught Dr. Seuss fever-- he's not so much into READING the Dr. Seuss stuff (although he had read Runny Babbit by Shel Silverstein all by himself, and is still ploughing through the mummy book like a bonafide champ!) but he's got a real jones for the swag that comes with it. His big purchase today (we went for St. Patrick's day decorations, because by now, they're really cheap, and the treasure chest he decorated didn't fill in that kitchy void for him) was a little ceramic Cat in the Hat, along with Thing 1 and Thing 2. He painted them almost immediately and started to set them up in a display case, and said, "Where will we put them?"

Well, damned if I know. Every flat surface in the entire frickin' house is covered by something that SOMEONE thought was pretty spiffy at one time and that we don't know what to do with now. Even now, sitting here and looking at, what I ahve to admit, is shit, I can't BEAR to throw any of it away. Big T made it, or Chicken brought it back from Hawaii, or my aunt made it for us or... Well... crap. Some of this shit really needs to go. It does. Next time I hit a big writing deadline (like I did when I finished Living Promises) I'm gonna treat myself to a big "chucking" of some of this memorobilia crap. I have to. I don't have any place for any thing new!

But you know what I'm not gonna throw out just yet?

This Cat in the Hat sticker that Zoomboy put on my laptop. Cause that, folks, is love AND art, and who can beat that with a stick?

And that's it-- my daily ramble. Nothing to report, but, like stay-at-home moms have known since home was a cave, everything that's important happens when there's nothing to report.