Dear Faithful Reader,

Hey girl!

I've been right here. Walking on the treadmill of life, or the elyptical of life, I have foot trouble you know. And you'd think that since I've been walking the elyptical of life for the last four weeks, I would of lost a pound. Hell no! I've only been walking thirty minutes everyday and I have yet to figure out how it blows a hole in my day that I can't seem to recover from.

I get up around 7:00, a little before on a good day. Then I wake up Melee' go downstairs and load or unload the dishwasher depending on the day. Make sure he gets his cereal and brushes his hair. (Boy will just go to school with his big bed head if you don't say anything to him.) ** Pay attention here, this is you first clue for whether or not you want multiple children ** By that time the Littles are up, I usually have their clothes set out and I have Peach dress herself and I have to get Ace's diaper changed and get him dressed. Critical Mass happens right when Melee' and Zoe (my niece) are set to walk out the door and the Littles are either chanting "I want meelk, I want meelk..." or they're trying to sneak out the front door with the big kids. Normally one is chanting, the other sneaking. And Melee's trying to walk out the door without his backpack. I try to either fold a load of clothes or start a load and call up the stairs for John. Try to get the Littles to eat something, pack Peach a lunch if it's school day and fix her hair. Second and third calls up to John and he's usually just down in the nick of time before the bus arrives at 8:30. After John is gone I usually get at least one phone call and then I try to eat my oatmeal, brush my teeth and make sure I have appropriate clothes on. (One afternoon I took John to Faith Formation, where I'm a teacher helper and I looked down to discover I had on my houseshoes.) Then I start gathering lunch boxes, diaper bags, purses, keys, gym membership card, cell phone, earphones, and any other miscellaneous paperwork etc. and the goal is to leave by 9:15. Peach dropped off at 9:30 and then Ace and I head to the gym. Get him checked in, find myself an elyptical with a t.v. and start watching The View at 10:00. 10:30 I pick up Ace and we run our errands, grab lunch and pick up Peach at 1:30 then home, books, nap. I then sit catatonic on the couch until the kids get up/home at about 3:30. Oh sure I do a couple of loads of laundry, finish whatever I didn't get done in the kitchen and then get ready for snackfest and homework. The afternoon is largely a blur, John gets home at 4:30 and then I go to the pantry and figure out what's for dinner. (I'm the Rachel Ray of canned food.)

Then Monday night there's Boyscouts where I'm the treasurer. (Please shoot me.) Tuesday night is Viola lesson, Tuesday/Thursday Melee' has drama, and we just started baseball season.

Bedtime is 8:00 for the Littles, 8:30 for Melee' and God help me, John stays up till 9:00. My husband and I then stare at the T.V for an hour before we go upstairs to stare at the T.V. in the laying down position. (And to be fair, I stare at the T.V. more than he does.) Then we drift off only to find that we have to get up and do it all over again tomorrow.

The other day I almost drew a cartoon of myself with a raincloud following me around to post but I decided that was sort of a downer, and I'm nothing if not optimistic.

Thanks for checking in with me! I've been stalking the cute pictures of "the boy". I have been wanting to blog about something that I'm just not ready for my Mom to read, but my Dad found out the other day, so I may as well. Stay tuned....

Adventures in Fine Dining

Subtitle: One more reason, I might be a Redneck.

While in Canton, Mom and I made our reservation to go to the fanciest Steakhouse in the surrounding area. We put on our very best jeans and sweatpants, (I'm serious, but I had on a really nice jacket and my best jewelry and Mom was working the dressy sweatpant/sweater combo) I wouldn't go so far as to say we were elegant, but I can say we were more dressed up than 90% of the clientele.

So we're escorted to our table, watered and menued. We ordered our steak and Caesar salads with asparagus and au gratin potatoes, The waitress brings out the salads, we get a little freshly ground pepper and we dig in for our first bite. I look at Mom, she looks at me, we take another bite. She looks at me, I look at her ... okay, who's gonna say it. Finally she says, "Does your salad taste fishy?" "Yes!" So we have a whole discussion of what in the world it could be, dirty bowl? greens in the fridge with unwrapped fish? We take another couple of bites of the salad and she says "Can you say something? Because whenever I say anything, it comes out bitchy." "Yeah, I think I can say something." I am after all, the queen of diplomacy.
The waitress comes by and says "Everything okay here ladies?"
"Well as a matter of fact, the salad tastes a little fishy." I whisper.
"Oh, well Caesar dressing has anchovies in it."
"REALLY?" we both gape.
"Oh yeah! Didn't you know that?"

(Oh sure I knew that. I just like to look like an idiot in front of people on my day off.)

The next day as we were laughing at ourselves and wondering how many people were having a knee slapper in the kitchen, I said, "My steak was really not as pink as it was supposed to be, but it was good." "Well why didn't you SEND IT BACK!"

I was too scared! I was afraid it might come back tasting like fish. And to tell you the truth, after ten or fifteen years of really enjoying Caesar salads, I think I'm all done. And YES, I know what Blue Cheese is and I'm not eating any of THAT either!

Mother's Day Out, Squared

I'm having a mini-vacation! Charlie's taking a day and a half off, so that I can cruise down to my Mom's and go kicking around First Monday Trade Days. Miles and miles of flea markets and crafts and food and clothes and food and wrought iron and lemonade and purses and things on a stick.

I'd never do First Monday by myself because it would be like going to a gigantic garage sale which I despise, so I would drift helplessly toward the arts and crafts where I would buy armloads of wooden crafts with hearts carved in them and get home and think "What in the *@&! was I thinking?" But my Mom and Aunt are excellent tour guides and do not allow purchases of anything carved in wood.

I'm so desperate to get out of these four walls. The weather man just said that out of the last 20 days we've had twenty days of precipitation. AAACCCKKK! So sorry to anyone who lives in that kind of climate BY CHOICE! I would go out of my ever-lovin mind! And three days being kid-free will be a nice break. Maybe Charlie will have that three-week progress report all ironed out by the time I get home.

It could happen.