Brain Dump

Funny thing about vacations: when (if?) you're finally done getting ready to go on vacation -- once everything is planned, packed, and paid for -- you really actually need the vacation, don't you? We're just about finished -- still need to pick my husband's suit and dress shirt from the cleaner, still need to pick out his tie and other accessories, still need to figure out what I'm doing about jewelry, still need to actually get everything into the carry-on bags, that kind of stuff, the little last-minute leftover things that give everyone agita -- and now more than ever I am ready to go sit in the airport with an Ativan or twelve and maybe a drink. I don't care that we don't leave in five days. I just want to go already.

I mean, really: it's in the 70s and sunny in Anaheim right now, with basically no chance of rain for the next ten days, and here it has been raining so much for so long that you can hear the grass growing. We haven't been able to mow the lawn in more than two weeks. It's starting to look like a cornfield. I feel like I'm camping, except I haven't seen any wildlife outside in so long that I am starting to get excited about the prospect of maybe possibly seeing another squirrel again someday. And I hate squirrels. Stupid fuzzy little tree-rats. If the world actually does end tomorrow like those wackjobs keep saying, I don't know how anyone around here would know the difference, because there is basically no sky left to fall any more. Whaaaah! Calgon, take me away!

You're sick of hearing this. I know. So here's what else I've been working on and/or thinking about lately, in between putting off buying Disneyland tickets until this very morning so I could reshuffle funds (ha!) in my checking account.

• I joined a book club. So far, I've gotten to read and review three books, with more coming soon, including one that I have ready to put in my handy red tote to read on the plane. You can read my reviews of Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks, Jean Kwok's debut novel Girl in Translation, and A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz over on BlogHer.
• I've been pondering Life's Great Questions with the gang at Prime Parents Club. Like, why don't we make wish lists for the Easter Bunny? And, is Daria Morgendorffer the coolest chick in cartoon history or what? And also, at what point should I stop lying about my age? And most importantly, is it humanly possible for me to be a bigger dork?
• I don't know whether a kid-sized carry-on bag filled with Tastykakes, Oreos, Doritos, cheese popcorn, and random singles is necessarily a good idea for a cross-country flight, but it will certainly make for an interesting social experiment. (Assuming your definition of "interesting" includes the phrase "it all ends in tears.")
• Related to above: I have a terrible fear that my kid is going to turn out to be the infamous "Jeffrey" that Bill Cosby described in his comedy routine many, many years ago. You seriously have no idea how much time I have spent in the past week worrying about this. I have some kids' Benadryl packed, just in case, but I am wondering if it might be more effective to just go the $10 airplane margarita route. (Whether I drink them or Shae does seems irrelevant at this point.)
• Seriously, is the world going to end at 6:00 tomorrow, or what? And if so, do I need to shave my legs and put on clean underwear? Should I even bother getting out of bed? That seems like an awful lot of work only to be subsumed into Heaven or (more likely in my case) banished to Hell for all eternity, you know? Can't I just sit on the couch and watch "Sports Night" on DVD until whatever happens, happens?

Obviously, I need to go away for a while. I'll try to post one more time before we leave -- maybe even two times, but let's not get ahead of ourselves, okay? -- and I will try to post at least once while we're on the road, but I make no promises. I will be Twittering as much as possible, putting up random cell phone pictures and stuff, so keep an eye on the sidebar or follow me if you don't already for updates on my exploits and shenanigans.

Death by Paper Cuts

Hi there! I'm rockle, and you might remember me as that blogger who used to update more than once every five days, before she kind of hit that pre-vacation wall with a very messy, bloody splat and kind of lost her mind a little bit.

Assuming I ever had one to begin with.

Anyway -- sorry for the virtual radio silence, but HOLY TOMATO do I have a metric butt-load of crap to do before we leave for California in 8 days. We have a lot of stuff ready to go -- like, most of our clothes are organized and just need to get in the suitcases -- but I still have all these little piddly things to do, like filling up the toiletry bags with sunscreen and disposable razors, etc.

OH AND LAUNDRY, oh my heavens.

They fixed our roof yesterday, which included painting the walls and ceiling of my bedroom, and my allergies have been really bad all season, so I decided to use a vacation day and spend the night at my parents' with Shae. I brought some wash with me to do -- yes, I am still secretly on some level a college-age mooch when it suits me -- and what I thought would be two quick loads turned out to actually be four.

FOUR LOADS OF LAUNDRY. Gaaah. It's not so much the washing as the folding. My husband has about half a ton of undershirts, and I can't match up any of the socks because it looks like I just grabbed a random assortment. Awesome. I so win at life.

Also, I somehow forgot to take any pictures of anything over the weekend except for my breakfast from Bob Evans on Saturday. Yes, I know. My life is positively riveting.

Hopefully I will have more stuff to tell you about before we leave next Wednesday, but in the meantime I just wanted to let you know am not dead yet. I'm out of Zyrtec and it's raining like the end of days again, which is never a good combination, and I haven't been getting all the sleep I need because I lay in bed at night making and re-making mental to-do lists with 537 items on them, but I am not dead yet. Check in with me in 24 hours, as this is subject to change without notice.

And if you know of a good fluff-n-fold, send me their number.

In Which The Writing Major Gets Indignant

I regularly listen to a podcast out of Seattle called "Too Beautiful To Live" -- TBTL for short. It's pretty cool, if you are like me and spend a lot of time driving and you think that an imaginary radio show which is basically about nothing but which is nevertheless unfailingly entertaining is a good way to spend a commute. TBTL has a blog, and a recent blog entry links to this Slate article about how the usage of language changes the meaning of words over time.

(Yes, this is probably going to be a week where I write about nothing of interest to anyone except me because I don't have any good pictures. Deal, McNeil.)

Basically, the gist of the Slate piece is that the meanings of words change when the words are used incorrectly by enough people over enough time. Not necessarily fake made-up words like "eleventy" and "stategery" and "agreeance" and "refudiate," but actual real-live words that currently exist in the English language, like "disinterested."

To quote Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

I believe that this phenomenon is referred to as "the principle of common usage." And this will come as no surprise to anyone, but I don't like it. I admit that I am something of a pedant when it comes to the English language. You might not be able to tell here on Ye Olde Blogge, because I try to write conversationally -- basically, I talk to myself when I am writing these entries, and sometimes I even talk to myself right out loud, and believe me when I say that hilarity does not always ensue, either -- but I know full well that there are Rules. Spelling, grammar, and mechanics count in real life. Anybody who tells you otherwise is at best uninformed and worst outright lying.

Look: I did not read Webster's Seventh Collegiate Dictionary in the sixth grade for my health, people.

So I suppose it goes without saying that I have Thoughts about the Slate story. Ugly thoughts, most of them involving cuss words and liberal use of pejorative terms for "persons who are not very intelligent." It's not because I disagree with the author of the article in question, either, but because I think he should fight harder to protect the legacy of the language. We all should. Words have meanings, and just because a bunch of bozos with basic-level Power Point skills think that "duly noted" means "I agree" does not make it so. Just because some wonk in a corner office thinks that it's perfectly fine to use "irregardless" with abandon does not make it a correct word.

I mean really, it's a single word with a double-negative built in. No one but me sees the problem here?

Right now, of course, I am not Mom-the-Grammar-Nazi, but believe me when I tell you that once Shae gets into elementary school and we start with the Language Arts, there will be a fairly strict enforcement of the Rules in our house. We're not going to let her slack off on the math and science homework, not if we ever expect this kid to have any part of Winning The Future, and you better believe that Spelling and Grammar and Mechanics Rules will be strictly enforced. I abandoned the "no sugar" edict ages ago, but a self-respecting Writing major must have some standards, dammit.

• Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
• Misusing "i.e." and "e.g." will be punishable by death. OK, not death, put possibly the loss of dessert.
• One space after a period in emails, two spaces after a period in academic papers, unless the assigned stylebook prescribes otherwise.
• No, you cannot use Comic Sans for your book report. What are you, a Visigoth?
• No, you cannot use 18-point type and 2-inch margins to make your paper "fit" the length requirements. Do you think I am stupid? Do you think I have never tried that myself?
• If you are talking about the liquor, it is "Scotch." If you are talking about the people, it is "Scots." Trust me on this one. Your "History of Great Britain" professor from Glasgow will not think you are funny. It doesn't matter if your MS Word grammar-checker doesn't find the error.
• Know where the quotation marks and other punctuation marks go in relation to each other. Know when quotation marks are required and when they are not. Ditto apostrophes.
• "There" does not mean "their" does not mean "they're." "Too" does not mean "to" does not mean "two." "Its" and "it's" are not interchangeable.
• Learn to properly diagram a sentence. Hardly anybody does this any more, but it is a useful skill for a writer to have, it will help you when you begin studying a second language, and it is a surprisingly effective party trick in college. Engineering and architecture majors love girls who can diagram things.
• Have at least 50 words in your vocabulary that are more than three syllables and ten letters long. Know what they mean and how to spell them, and be able to use them in a sentence. I suggest starting with "onomatopoeia" because it is highly descriptive and useful and also my very favorite word.
• If you ask me what words mean before you look them up in the dictionary, I am going to lie to you. Consider yourself warned. And yes, I will know.
• I don't care what the other kids' parents say: YOU are going to do your History report at the library, using encyclopedias that were published before you were born, exactly as God intended. Wikipedia is not a reputable source for information. Nothing on the Internet is.
• Reading the CliffsNotes is not anywhere near the same thing as reading the book itself. Are you trying to give me a stroke? No, I don't care that you think that Chaucer and Shakespeare are not written in "English."
• No Notre Dame or Yankees fans in the house. Ever. (No, this is not technically grammar-related, but it's a rule that cannot be spelled out often enough.)

Of course, I can have all the rules in the world, and none of it will change the fact that I will probably spend the rest of my career taking orders from people who don't know an ellipsis from epilepsy, and who have never even heard of subject/verb agreement, let alone know how to employ it correctly.

"Irregardless" will always make me get up and walk out of the room, though.

The Big Dig

The world is collapsing around our ears.

You think I'm being melodramatic as usual, but of course I am absolutely not making this up. Our roof is leaking into our bedroom and this is causing no end of emotional, psychological, and physical distress to me. You can probably guess why: emotional, because "oh noes, all our stuff!" (which is totally fine); psychological, because "oh noes, we are forcing our poor child to live in squalor and disrepair because we're terrible people!" (which is not entirely the truth, although I'll let you figure out where the line between fact and fiction is perforated); and physical, because "oh noes, we're beating ourselves up over this!" (which, all that self-flagellation really takes a toll, you know?).

(And oh by the way -- that is A LOT of punctuation, right there. My former English teachers and lit professors are either insanely proud, or insanely appalled, or just insane.)

Of course, most of these things are non-starters. The roofing guy came out to the house today to take pictures and assess the damage and the good news, so far, is that it seems like the damage is pretty minor, or at least it only affects a small area of the roof. It's rained on and off for the last two days and we haven't had any more drippage, but in the event that it does, we already have the big plastic trash can from the office in position. On Friday, when we discovered the leak, we found only a tatty old sweater had gotten wet. As far as damage goes, that's so insignificant as to barely register -- that sweater doesn't fit anyway, and it was about to go into the "giveaway" pile.

But now we're waiting on the estimate and then once that comes, and we figure out how many kidneys and liver chunks and potential first-born children we need to barter in order to come up with however much money is going to be needed to pay to fix a roof on an 83-year-old house with a lot of the original fixtures, and then after that there will be strange people tromping through my bedroom on their way to the busted-up spot, and that means that, at some point probably sooner than later, I will really need clean my room.

Our room is a mess. Not quite a federal disaster area, not yet, definitely not at risk of qualifying as a Superfund site, but  ... we have A LOT of stuff. Right now our room is filled with laundry, clean clothes that need to be put somewhere, but our closet space is limited, and some of it is potentially in the leaky-roof danger zone, plus it's time to switch out the winter stuff for the summer stuff, and I don't really have anything that fits, so I don't know what to keep and what to give away and where to put everything in the meantime. There's just SO MUCH STUFF, and when we try to make some headway (a thorough cleaning would take at least a few hours, even if we were uninterrupted by a four-year-old whose idea of "helping" is basically to move stuff from one end of the room to the other and then jump on the bed), we get about half an hour in, tops, before it gets so overwhelming that we both end up fighting and yelling and crying and "accidentally" throwing away the other one's perfectly fine pair of slightly-used-but-still-good-condition Crocs with absolutely no tread left on the soles BUT THEY ARE MY PHILLIES CROCS, DAMMIT, AND I LOVE THEM.

Plus, one of us might possibly have a slight over-accumulation problem, but that's only because I keep losing one sock of each pair every time they go in the wash and it is my fault that I have to wear socks with most of my shoes so that my feet don't freeze and my toes don't fall off? It's sad, really, that two grown adults -- one of whom is an engineer, and one of whom purports to have a major Martha Stewart complex -- just cannot get themselves together, but there you are.

We've gotten exactly nowhere so far, but thanks for asking. We're planning to make a plan as soon as we get the estimate back and we are both in the same place at the same time when the sun is still up, or at least when it is on the sunset side of the deep dark night, and not the sunrise side.

One good thing has come out of this, though: aside from clean clothes, one other big thing that takes up valuable real estate in our bedroom is stacks and stacks of books (most of them mine, I admit), and our bookshelves are just about full to bursting, and I don't want to start moving the clutter from one room to another, hoarders-style, because let's face it, it's not just our bedroom that needs help, and moving the junk around would just make a bad situation worse because eventually we'd need to move it somewhere else, so I've decided to start culling the collection and start a paperback book swap at work. I took three bags full of books into work this morning, and I am taking more tomorrow, and G said he has some he'll contribute to the cause, and you know, I don't even care if nobody else brings any books in, as long as someone takes these off my hands. So far three books have been taken out of the box at work, and not everything is trash, either -- there are Pattersons and Evanoviches and Sookie Stackhouse novels in there.

And I managed to find a beautiful, untouched, unopened copy of Little Women, which I am sad to admit I have not yet read. That might be the most embarrassing thing about this whole plight -- I'm potentially a hoarder AND I am apparently the worst former Writing major EVER.

Anyway. Send us your thoughts and well-wishes and any spare sacks of money you might have lying around. And also, send shovels.

WSJM Public Access Presents Coffee Talk

I'm at home dying of plague and consumption -- okay, strep throat, which is totally treatable thanks to modern medicine, but you have no idea how bad it is unless you have it so whatever -- and I slept until 11:00 so by the time I woke up there were no good daytime TV shows on any more -- haha like there are any good daytime TV shows to begin with -- so I am making up my own entertainment from some Skype screen shots from over the weekend.

WSJM Public Access Television in Pottstown-Des Plaines-Bethlehem presents "Coffee Talk with Joey Burger."

Good morning everybody. Beautiful day outside, not snowing for a change. Nice and warm here inside the studio. Thanks for joining us. Remember, if you want to be a member of our studio audience, call the switchboard at 777-GO-2-WSJM. Only 10 seats available for every taping, and the first three people who arrive at the studio will get to work the cameras. Ha!

So let me tell you about what happened yesterday after the show. You won't believe it. I went home for lunch and instead of getting my usual chocolate milk, my mommy made me chocolate MALT milk. Can you BELIEVE it? Chocolate MALT milk! What is this, 1950? What is she giving me, Ovaltine? But let me tell you, that chocolate MALT milk was DELICIOUS. Absolutely delicious. So I'm a new convert. Pour me some Ovaltine!

We're going to have a great show today. I'll be drinking my chocolate malt milk with our guests. Up first, we're going to talk with one of the Wonder Pets. That's right, Tuck the Turtle is going to be here. Give it up for Tuck!

Then we're going to joined by our musical guests, here to talk about the diss of the century at the Grammys, ladies and gentlemen we have Justin Bieber! [hollering] And he'll be showing off his NEW HAIRCUT!

And finally at the end of the show we're going to have our very favorite segment: snack time! Today my mommy is serving graham crackers, applesauce, and yes, CHOCOLATE MALT MILK for everybody. It's going to be great! Stick around after the commercials!

What Day Is This Anyway?

Dear family: I have not blogged in almost a week, but I am not dead. Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated, mostly by me, because I have strep throat right now and you know what a frickin' drama queen I am. Of course, that doesn't really explain why I didn't write anything on Thursday or Friday of last week, or over the weekend, or yesterday when I had the day off, but the important thing is that I AM NOT DEAD. Even though my throat hurts too much for popsicles right now, and basically the only solid food I've eaten all day has been a grilled cheese sandwich soaked in tomato soup, and I didn't even eat all of it because IT HURTS SO MUCH YOU GUYS. I want my mommy. And some ice cream. And maybe some morphine.

Anyway: I have something lined up for tomorrow. Okay?

Bury My Heart in Hohman, Indiana

It all comes back to A Christmas Story, if you want to know the truth. It's possible that within A Christmas Story lies the answers to the meaning of life, the Universe, and everything, but at the very least, it is the mile marker on the Highway of Life that I use to locate my position in the cosmos.

At different times, I have experienced almost everything that happens in that movie except for getting to see first-hand the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window. I have lived the life of almost every character in that movie except for maybe Scut Farkus (and then I can't say with any degree of certainty that I've never been a bully in one way or another). I have been disappointed by mail-order decoder rings; and I've laid in the snow like a slug, that being my only defense; and I'm sure as hell that in the heat of battle I have woven a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging out in space.

So I've been Ralphie (still am, most of the time), and I've been The Old Man (still am, some of the time), and I've been Randy (still am, when it suits me) -- I've even been Flick with my tongue stuck to the metaphorical flagpole more times than it is probably dignified to admit to, but there you go -- and now I've gone for the superfecta by becoming Mrs. Parker and giving my kid soap poisoning.

Yes, that's right: I had to wash my kid's mouth out with soap.

I am not particularly proud of this particular bit of discipline, but it is what it is. Definitely not my proudest moment as a parent. The good news is that it wasn't because of cussing, at least not yet -- I'll have to cross that particular Bridge Too Far when we get there, I suppose. But in a way, this issue was worse, because it turns out that one of the multitude of bad habits that my kid has picked up from her friends in school is spitting when she gets angry.

Not the "good" kind of spitting, either. This is not the spitting for distance and accuracy that my friend the former Marine taught me how to do when I graduated from high school, being able to spit an empty Coke can off a picnic bench at 50 paces, the kind that ended up landing me a part in West Side Story when I was in college. This is nasty, feral-llama type spitting, and I absolutely won't stand for it. To me, spitting on someone is the most disrespectful thing you can possibly do, a Jerry-Springer-style dis, dirtier even than uttering the F-dash-dash-dash word. It's gross and filthy and Not Allowed, not ever.

I warned her, of course. When I last got a report of this behavior from her teacher, I told her that the next time it happened, I was going to wash her mouth out with soap. I even threatened to go out and buy a bar of Lifebuoy especially for the occasion, because there is no sense in doing punishment if it's going to be half-assed. I almost didn't make it through, when the school's director heard me referencing A Christmas Story and barely suppressed her laughter. But that was weeks ago, and it hadn't happened again, until Tuesday.

In the heat of the moment, I had to go with Dove Gentle Exfoliating, because that's what we had in the house. I told her: don't bite down, and don't lick the soap, and you'll be okay, but it would be gross, and anway, I said this would happen, and so this was what I had to do. She cried and fought and whipped herself into a right frenzy, as you might have expected. But she was a trooper, and she did her time (ten seconds, and it will go up by ten seconds every time we have to do it again, which I hope it never does), and I really want to believe that she has been rehabilitated, although I suppose we'll see, won't we? Even Ralphie became quite a connoisseur of soap, didn't he?

And, just like Mrs. Parker, I did take a taste afterwards. Soap is ... not tasty. So I hope we never need to do this again.

Spent

I've been quiet the last few days, and I'm sorry, but it's been a big roller coaster and I just can't process everything. It's too much, too overwhelming. I really try not to be a whiner, and I really try not to use this blog as free therapy, but sometimes you need a brain dump, you know? And this is one of those times.

The Good News:
My husband finally found a job. After 17 months and a huge deal of wondering and worrying and kind of aimless wandering in the wilderness, and I don't even know how many interviews at I don't even know how many places, he finally found a job. He starts on the 27th. I am happy for him, and excited, but more than anything, I am relieved. We've made do on his unemployment and my paycheck, and we've been as smart and as frugal as we could so we haven't been hurting as much as so many other people have been, so the money was never really the issue. But already I can sense a change in my husband, a subtle and slight regaining of his confidence, and I glad he's getting his groove back, so to speak. I think the job is a restart for him, a basically entry-level job in his field, especially considering his experience, but I also think it's going to be a great opportunity for him, and he's going to be getting out of the house again, which is more fantastic than I can possibly tell you.

The Bad News:
Somebody stole the bistro table and chairs off our front porch overnight. I have absolutely zero idea why anybody would want it -- it's just some cheap little metal set from Wal-Mart that we got ten years ago -- but sometime between my last cigarette yesterday and my first cigarette this morning, someone took our stuff. All things considered, it's no big deal; nobody was hurt, nothing major was taken, nobody broke into our house or keyed our cars or anything like that. It's more of an annoyance than anything else, and I felt like a major tool having to call the police first thing in the morning. The cops were here before it was even fully light out. It's just -- somebody stole our stuff, you know? I would have sold it for next to nothing.

The Worse News:
We were at my parents' for a yard sale today (made $50 selling my kid's outgrown clothes, whoo!) and while we were there my uncle wandered off. My great-uncle, actually, my grandfather's sister's husband. He's 81 and has Alzheimer's, and he's staying at my parents' with his daughter while his wife, my great-aunt, is in the hospital under psychiatric evaluation. Her diagnosis is Lewy body dementia, which I've never head of before now, and I am not sure about the prognosis but I am not sure it's good. Anyway, sometime around lunchtime, my uncle went out for a walk and ... never came back. He was gone for more than hour, and we had four people out looking for him at one point. We called the police and they found him one township and about 5 miles away. Thankfully some nice lady saw him wandering around, lost and confused, and she brought him inside and gave him water and called the police herself. Apparently he decided that he was going to walk to the hospital to visit his wife. God bless his heart. I can't imagine how upsetting all of this must be for both of them. My husband's grandfather was right: getting old ain't for sissies.

The Worst News Of All:
The closed my grandparents' pool today, and we were not expecting it. We thought we had until next weekend. We packed our suits and everything, and were planning to go swimming this afternoon after the yard sale was over. I didn't even get to stick my feet in the water one last time. All day I was feeling this weird, vague sadness about the whole thing, and I just now realized why it bothers me so much: we might not get to go in that pool again. Ever again. I've been swimming in that pool for like 25 years, and last weekend might have been the last time I got a chance to do that. My grandparents are getting older every day, and their health is getting worse, and every time I see them, it might be for the last time. Probably I shouldn't say that, but the facts are what they are. They are old, and they are ill, and there is no way to know how much time they have left. I am not prepared for this, for what this means. I don't have many pictures of Shae with my grandparents, and we forgot the camera today. What if next weekend ... I don't want to think about it, and I know I have to, and I just can't. Right now I have pictures in my photostream that are ready to be posted, and I don't want to put them up, because I can't bear the thought that those could be the last pictures of my daughter in that pool. It's not just the pool, of course, but that is the only concrete thing I can wrap my head around. The pool might not be opened next summer, because. Because. Because of things that are entirely possible but just too horrible to think about. And now, after only a couple of nights of really relaxed sleep in 17 months (see: "The Good News"), I am going to go back to not sleeping at all again, and I am just so tired. I am an hour away, I only see my family for one day on the weekends, it already makes me crazy because I feel like there is more that needs to be done and I just can't do it, and I feel so guilty all the time, and ... I just can't. I'm exhausted. I'm spent. And tomorrow it will start all over again.

I Swear To God, I Used To Have A Life

It's getting to be that time again where I show you my fall TV schedule and My Anonymous Mother looks at it and basically goes, "Ugh, for this I paid all that money for college?" because apparently in my head M.A.M. is Yiddish. Would you like to see this year's pretty little chart? (If not, too bad, because here it comes anyway.)

(Incidentally, guess who just got a new color computer at work? THIS GAL, that's who.) (Well, it's the department's color printer, but STILL.)

The changes in shows and/or timeslots are highlighted. It looks kind of similar to last year's version, doesn't it? That's because THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, people. I am basically watching the same shows as last year. There are only a couple of differences which I will discuss below:

• You will notice a marked lack of purple on this bad boy; that is because I never know when Top Chef, Project Runway, Burn Notice, White Collar, Psych, In Plain Sight -- basically, all my shows on cable -- actually stop and start. I will keep watching them as long as they are on (especially Burn Notice and White Collar because Jeffrey Donovan, Bruce Campbell, and Matthew Bomer are yummy) but I have no idea what time any of these shows actually air because I have a TiVo.
• Yes, I just said the Bruce Campbell is "yummy." I can't help myself. He is funny and charming and devilish and I have absolutely no defense against that demographic. I don't care if he is old enough to be my (sugar) daddy. Don't you judge me.
• Outside the cable shows, which were intentionally omitted, four shows are completely gone from the list -- Ugly Betty (finished), FlashForward (cancelled), NUMB3RS (finished), and Gossip Girl (too stupid to keep watching). Lost never appeared last year because it didn't have its season premiere until February, and it is the only show that I will actively miss. Thank God for the complete series on Blu-Ray, which of course we will be getting.
• Every year I say I am "done" with Survivor, and every time a new season starts I still get sucked back in. This time I am watching for two reasons: one, to see how long before Jimmy Johnson (yes, THAT Jimmy Johnson) sticks around -- hopefully not very -- and two, to see how badly the changes they keep making are wrecking my show.
• For the record, not that you asked, but I still stand by my assertion that Ethan Zohn is the best Survivor winner in history. He has a foundation. Go check it out. This is a public service announcement. Also, he is very, very funny and charming and have I mentioned that I have no defense against that demographic?
• Yes, I'm going to at least check out the "reboot" of Hawaii Five-O, because I am an asshole, and also because Daniel Dae Kim is lovely and charming and I am glad he has work so soon after Lost. Not entirely sure how I feel about Scott Caan, and I don't understand why CBS is so completely in love with Alex O'Laughlin, but come on -- Hawaii! Cops! "Book 'im, Danno!" You know you're going to watch, too, at least once.
• I would personally like to thank the television executives who made the decisions to move Survivor to Wednesdays and move Glee to Survivor's old timeslot on Thursdays Tuesdays (Ed.: fixed), because that resolved one of my most major scheduling conflicts. Now I only have one left, on Mondays at 8:00, and I am going to have a hard time deciding whether House or How I Met Your Mother gets bumped to repeats. Chuck stays put, always and forever, amen (because of the cute and charming and no defense and hello have you even been listening?).
• No, I don't know why The Defenders looks interesting, but it does.
• Big jeers to both ABC and NBC, who only have two shows each on this chart. Why can't you guys make good television, ABC and NBC? Modern Family and Community are fantastic. Chuck and Castle are great. MOAR PLZ.
• Dear CBS: When can I expect the next mortgage payment on my soul? Get that check in the mail STAT or I will stop watching CSI: NY, which kind of sucks any more anyway.
• I'm giving The Big Bang Theory another chance, even though I kind of didn't like it early in the show's run. If you must blame someone, blame Linda Holmes at NPR's Monkey See blog, who has been making quite a case for it. You can also give an assist to Wil Wheaton, who also loves the show and has been a guest more than once. I trust that Ensign Wesley Crusher will not steer me wrong.
• Gaaah, I still can't believe that I am going to voluntarily watch Jimmy Johnson on television. WTF is WRONG with me? Damn you, Mark Burnett! Damn you straight to hell!
• Oh hell yes I'll be watching Conan's new show when it airs. I will NOT be making that mistake again. Team Coco Forever!

Any other recommendations? Last year someone (my sister?) said something about Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, but I can't get into them -- not a big soap fan, really (which is a large part of why I gave up on Gossip Girl -- that, and the unrelenting stupidity). I find Mad Men to be intolerably slow, and the entire concept of Breaking Bad scares me, but I am giving Rubicon (also on AMC) a shot. I missed out on BSG and I think I am a little late to the party for Eureka but if someone thinks they're worth trying to find on-demand I will see what I can do.

And for the love of all that is Good and Holy, let's hope that Jimmy Johnson does not win Survivor or my head will explode.

Fear of Flying

I struggled mightily with the order in which the next two posts should go up: do I want to put my favorite pictures up first, and then the terribly embarrassing video? Or do I want to go with the hysterically funny video clip, and then the bittersweetly lovely pictures of the kids looking adorable? In the end, chronological order won out (even though, technically, everything is out of sequence vis-à-vis everything else -- the pictures you are seeing today were taken on Tuesday, and the pictures you will see tomorrow were taken on Thursday, and the pictures you have already seen? Were taken both before AND after both Tuesday AND Thursday. But as I said when I saw Pulp Fiction for the first time, lo these many years ago: Non-linear storytelling kicks ass.)

So. Anyway. On Tuesday night during our vacation, we went to Fantasy Island Amusement Park, which you might remember from last year's trip to the shore. This year we went earlier in the night, because we knew it was there (prior to last year, I swear to God I had never heard of the place, even though My Anonymous Mother swears up and down that my Aunt Kim used to take her kids there). It's not really a dress-up place, but I got Shae all dolled up anyway, because I had packed a little skirt outfit for her, and by God she was going to wear it someplace.

See what I mean about the pictures looking like they were taken for a catalog? Anyway. Things started out well on the boat ride ...

... and were okay on the train ride ...

... but we did not do so well on the traffic jam ride ...

... although we did better on the honey bee ride (you will just have to take my word for it).

BUT. Things really went off the rails on the ferris wheel. Oh, dear sweet Jeebus, my arch-nemesis the ferris wheel!

See that picture of me, holding the video camera? That's going to be important in a minute or so. Shae did great on the ferris wheel ...

... but, um ... okay, let me just put it this way and then cut to the clip. I'll be totally honest here: I am deathly afraid of heights. DEATHLY. Well, not heights, exactly, but falling to my death. I can handle airplanes for some reason -- I love to fly, actually, although I do have trouble with take-offs and landings -- but I really, really don't like being in high, open places because I can picture in my head all the terrible things that can go wrong and I can't stop it and ... well, even though the audio commentary on this clip is all me, having a nervous breakdown in front of my 3-year-old on a stupid ferris wheel at a perfectly lovely kiddie park at the shore, it's still pretty funny. I can admit that.

Next time G is getting ferris wheel duty. Shae's going to be on her own with the roller coasters, though.

Desperation Samba

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the week before the week before vacation is the worst week of the entire year. I can't put my clothes in the suitcase, because I haven't changed my mind about what I want to pack enough times yet. I can't really switch to autopilot at work, because there are still projects and deadlines that need to be met before I go. And I can't really go grocery shopping, because if I do, and we don't eat every. single. thing. in the house before we leave, then you just know that while we're away we'll have a major electrical storm and my house will be without power for 4 days and the basement will flood and the toilet will overflow and everything in the fridge and the freezer will spoil and we'll get rats and bugs and squatters and looting and our home will be condemned and we'll have to live in our cars or even worse -- WE'LL NEED TO MOVE IN WITH MY MOTHER.

So this week we're doing what I like to call the "desperation samba," a very carefully choreographed dance that involves cleaning out the current provisions and making meals out what basically amounts to random crap in my freezer and cupboards. Mysterious baggies of ground meat. Baked beans of unverifiable provenance. Canned soup out the wazoo. Cereal and PB&J for supper, with sides of creamed corn and freezer-burned lima beans. I mean, yes, we'll go to the store for absolute essentials, like milk and bread and the occasional fruit or vegetable, but my husband is under very strict orders should that unfortunate eventuality occur: quarts of milk only, smallest loaves of bread you can find, only three ears of corn. Our biggest splurge in the last two weeks was buying two pounds on strawberries last Sunday, and we did that only because, hey, we really like strawberries in our house, and I knew they'd get eaten.

I will say this much: doing this? Living like complete savages? It takes a lot of cojones, and confidence in your own cooking abilities. I like to think of myself as a better-than-average home cook, and I pride myself on my ability to make a meal out of basically anything, provided that I have access to basic herbs, spices, and bouillon cubes. But making meals out of scavenged foodstuffs is part skill, part alchemy, part divination, part illusion, and part faith, with a big heaping swig of ballsiness thrown in: "Oh, yes, you WILL eat what I am feeding you."

This is the kind of wackaloony stuff I've served to my actual family this week for dinner:

• Browned loose sweet Italian sausage with chopped onions and canned diced tomatoes, served over elbow macaroni that was tossed with butter and Parmesan cheese
• Thawed package of pre-cooked chicken with a sell-by date of November 2009, with some kind of noodly stuff
• Zucchini gratin -- sliced zucchini sauteed with olive oil and Italian seasoning, with toasted breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese added
• Frosted mini-wheats cereal

I mean, yeah, this is totally a first-world problem -- "oh, poor poor pitiful me, I am serving my family food that we bought maybe two weeks ago but that we had to properly store in the refrigerator or freezer until we got around to using it" -- and it's more than partly my own fault since I'm such a cheapskate, but still. When was the last time you served chicken to your kid that had been in the freezer for 8 months? I just don't want to waste money on stuff that will just sit around while I am laughing it up at the beach, and I don't want to take two chicken breasts if I don't have enough to share with everyone.

Now do you see why I worry about drinking?

Does This Mai-Tai Make My Butt Look Big?

I was having a bit of a freak-out this morning because it occurred to me, later than perhaps it should have, that I won't be able to spend my entire vacation sitting around drinking blue stuff in giant vats with paper umbrellas while I'm on vacation because (1) we'll be there with small impressionable children, and (2) I understand the service at public beaches is terrible, and also (3) I kind of don't want my diet to go completely off the rails at this point.

Don't worry, this isn't going to become a full-time "listen to rockle whine about her diet" blog. Because I am not unhappy with it, or anything. No sir: I just had blueberry waffles and sausage and actual real-live syrup for breakfast, BECAUSE I CAN. But what I can't do is pretend to be a total sloppy lush while I'm away for a week, unless I plan on eating nothing but grapes and pistachios the rest of the time, because of all the calories in my delicious beloved rum drinks.

I mean, I could do that, I suppose, but why would I want to? There is a Ben & Jerry's in Beach Haven, and I can already hear it calling my name.

So I'm trying to set things up for myself so I can enjoy myself, and enjoy enjoying myself, without feeling the least bit guilty about it. And after I scoured the Intarwebtubes for recipes (there are more than I thought there would be, but many involve weird ingredients that I have never heard of before) it occurred to me that I had the answer right in front of me the whole time.

SPOILER ALERT: I'll be drinking diet Cuba Libres -- rum and Diet Coke with Lime. (And fresh lime wedges, of course, because I think I'm all fawncey.) It's kind of absolutely hysterical, because why is Diet Coke with Lime my favorite kind of Diet Coke in the whole wide world and all of the Heavens above, amen? Because it already tastes like a Cuba Libre.

But I might also try this thing called a "Bikini Blueberry," which sounds like a nice little fruity concoction, and only about 115 calories or so per drink, plus a piece of fruit!

Bikini Blueberry
1¼ oz. pineapple vodka
3 oz. diet blueberry juice
1½ oz. club soda (or flavored diet seltzer)
pineapple chunk for garnish

Who's going to try it with me? Cocktails on the back deck in 9 days.

Pack Rat

In 10 days we leave for vacation. This time on that fateful morning, I will be running around the house like the proverbial headless chicken, shrieking and panicking as we start to load up the car, constantly doing an inventory of what we have and what we need and what we forgot. Where is the umbrella? Did we pack the toothbrushes? What about underpants? Deodorant? Beach towels? That one weird kitchen tool that nobody knows what it's for or even how to use it but you know the second we arrive at the rental house we're going to suddenly realize that it is a Vitally Important Utensil? Do we have enough lighters? I only have five in my purse, will that be enough?

Yes: I am aware that I am off-the-charts bananapants crazy and possibly certifiable.

I've been sort of stealthily packing my own stuff for a few weeks already -- stuff I know I want to put in the suitcase that I can manage to do without until then. Some new shirts that I would like to be seen in by my mother at least once before there is a food stain in the bosomal area. A pair of shorts that don't quite fit yet but that should be okay by the time we go. The new outfit I got for when my sister and I go to a concert in Atlantic City. I am not packing a whole lot, because there will be a washing machine, but of course in the next ten days I will reconsider and revise and revamp and reimagine my entire "resort collection."

Which is ridiculous, because I'll just end up packing the same stuff I already have set aside anyway. But then, I am not always the sharpest tool in the crayon box.

We have also already started packing up the non-perishables in the ice chest:

See if you can identify the one thing in there that will definitely NOT be coming out.

Something Strange Is Happening

I don't know what's going on this summer, but something strange is happening. I mean, something very, very odd and funny. And not "ha-ha" funny, either, but funny as in "oh, God, no!" But nevertheless, there it is: I am having a good time having a boring life.

Look, I am absolutely the Queen of Manufactured Drama. My special talents are jumping to conclusions and making mountains out of molehills. It's part of why I wanted to study television in college -- perhaps, if I knew something about how to write a script, I could kind of force things to happen the way I wanted them too.

Or at least have a good comeback when the Universe dropped a steaming turd in my oatmeal.

But I'll be damned if taking a three-year-old to an amusement park on the hottest day of the year and watching her have a hell of a time on every single ride isn't the quickest way to kick your blues in the ass that I have ever seen.

Who'd've thunk?

We Are The Champions

Not sure if (or how often) I mentioned it before, but I come from a family of champion swimmers. Don't want to brag, but squirreled away somewhere (probably in my parents' garage or attic) are literally dozens of trophies and medals and ribbons that my sisters and I earned for somehow magically managing to not epically embarrass ourselves in the pool.

Well: correction. My sisters were decent swimmers. My awards are for, like, making it from one end of the pool to the other without my arms falling off, or without bleeding, or something.

I mean, my swimming career was not really the stuff of inspirational motion pictures, like "Rocky" or "Invincible" or "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story." I would say I was decent but I'd be lying, and even I know it. I swam competitively on and off from the time I was around 6 years old, mostly in the summer but sometimes in the winter, until I was in 10th grade, and while the trophy case in the basement was totally full, only one of those suckers was mine -- and that one was for a relay, so I can't even claim that much credit, even though I was the best available backstroker possible for the "Deadly Medley" at the time because someone had mono for most of the summer or something.

(My junior year in high school, to "stay involved," I became the Manager of the high school swim team, and also the announcer, which I was very very good at, and that is what made me want to become a sportscaster, which is how I ended up at Syracuse, where I changed majors like three times and eventually got my B.S. in Writing for Television, Radio, and Film, all because I was too neurotic and self-conscious to stay in the Broadcast Journalism program with those idiot frat-rats and now Mike Tirico has the MNF job that is rightfully mine. YOU BASTARDS. I hope every guy who was ever mean to me in college is HAPPY NOW, because I would have been DAMN GOOD at the MNF job.)

(Yes, I am aware that I have issues.)

But I think I've lost the plot here -- the point is, there are a lot of good swimmers in my family. My mom and her siblings were good, my sisters were good, my cousins were good, some of my cousins still are very good, Uncle Quack went to college on a swimming scholarship. It's in our blood, this mer-people thing, this total and complete comfort that we have in the water. It's, like, communicable or something.

There are MANY THINGS that I am teaching my kid that I am not necessarily (outwardly) proud of, but this one? I own this one. I love that she is just like everyone else in the family -- including other adopted members, who went on to be swimming coaches. My swimming coach. The one who helped me win that one-and-only "Deadly Medley" trophy.

Yeah, we're pretty awesome.

Litany of Worries

I worry about everything all the time. I worry that my spring bulbs aren't going to bloom this year. I worry that my summer flowers will not survive the choking weeds in my back flower beds. I worry that we're going to have grubs in the front yard.

I worry about how much I worry. I worry what people think of me when I wear my Crocs in public. I worry that I will never again be able to wear a pair of stretch pants without looking like a homeless former circus clown.

I worry that I am not getting enough sleep. I worry that I am not getting enough calcium. I worry that I am not getting enough fiber. I worry that I am eating too much red meat. I worry that I am not getting enough fruits and vegetables. I worry that a grown-ass woman with a full-time job shouldn't eat Lucky Charms for dinner two nights a week.

I worry that I am ever-so-slowly but ever-so-surely losing my mind. I worry that I spend too much time playing World of Warcraft. I worry that I will never get my Loremaster achievement. I worry that I will never again be fully happy at work. I worry that my husband will never find a job. I worry that when he does I will have to do laundry again. I worry whether it is possible to die under a pile of unmatched socks.

I worry that maybe I need a vacation. I worry that maybe my only vacation this year will feature tents, worms, and my cousin Jason's stinky shoes. I worry that I will never again stay in a hotel with a swim-up bar. I worry that I will never see Paris. I worry that I will never see Dublin. I worry that I will never see Rio de Janeiro. I worry that I will never see Cairo. I worry that this perpetual hum of barely-controlled panic is probably not healthy.

I worry that I might have toenail fungus. I worry that I will lose my toenail before sandal season. I worry that I will lose my toe. I worry about a couple of freckles that look funny. I worry that I can't remember when I last had a Pap smear. I worry that this sinus thing is actually brainworms. I worry that maybe I watch too much "Fringe." I worry that maybe I should be on anti-psychotics or at least anti-depressants.

I worry that my frown lines and crow's feet are turning into worry furrows. I worry that we'll never get around to making the repairs we need to make to the house. I worry that we'll be stuck there forever. I worry that my daughter won't be able to get into a good college because we live in a crappy school district. I worry that we are not giving her the life she deserves. I worry that we are not giving ourselves the life we deserve.

I worry about not being able to take care of our parents as they get older. I worry about my grandparents. I worry about my sisters. I worry about the cats. I worry about that stupid mouse and whether we're ever going to catch him before he gives us all hantavirus. I worry about gingivitis and when it's time to get my oil changed. I worry about global warming and world peace and gay rights and birthers and wingnuts and moonbats and loonballs.

I worry about what the hell the world is coming to. I worry that maybe I shouldn't have gotten out of bed this morning. I worry that it's all worse than I thought. I worry that it actually isn't.

Someone Send a Plunger

Someone unexpected told me yesterday that they read this blog, and when I asked them what they thought, their answer was this: "Man, what happened to all your stories?"

And to be honest, I wasn't sure what to think about that, because on the one hand, it's not like I don't write something 4-5 times a week, but on the other hand, yeah I kind of have been boring lately. I'll 'fess up to that. For a while I thought it was just the doldrums, and I still think that is part of it, but really, I think the problem is the potty training.

Because: potty training really, really sucks. And it is making me feel like a bad parent.

If you go and Google "potty training methods," you'll get about 16 million results. There are separate methods for boys and girls, one-month plans, one-week plans, one-weekend plans, one-day plans. There are books and DVD's and audio courses and special diapers and panties and cattle prods or something, I don't even know any more. I am really starting to think that there is such a thing as the "potty-industrial complex," which is on the same level as the "wedding-industrial complex" and the "beauty-industrial complex" and the "daycare-industrial complex" and all those industries exist solely to tell me what I am doing wrong.

And I am starting to believe them.

So there are no funny stories lately because there is not a whole lot of funny, because most of the conversations that I am having with my kid can be summed up as follows: me asking, "Shae, do you have to go potty?" followed by 15 minutes of screaming and tantrums and arguments and negotiations. And that's just me. Add in the random noises Shae is making and ... well, it's quite a caterwaul.

I know we'll get through this eventually, or at least I hope we will, and I think it will be sooner than later, but man oh man, right now? Agony. Everybody's mad at everybody else all the time and it's just an unpleasant place to be. She'll tell us when she has to pee, sometimes, but she never tells us when she has to poop, and we are talking split-second precision timing if we want to catch her in the act and get her to the potty on time.

If we get mad, she cries, and if we try to be firm but gentle, she doesn't seem to get it, like it's all a game, and I feel like we're being all overindulgent and blahblahblah and everything that everybody says is wrong with people of my generation who are now parents, with kids who don't have any rules or boundaries or discipline.

Then we whip ourselves up into a froth, where everybody's mad at everybody else and ... well, I already mentioned that it isn't exactly Disneyland.

So that's what happened to my stories. For a little while longer, anyway, they're being flushed.

But hey! Here are some random, entirely out of context pictures to thank you for reading this while big whiny rant.

Tiny Indulgences

I know, I know, I know: I've been a boring old crotchety untalented hack lately, you don't need to tell me. I wish I had a good excuse, but I don't -- basically, it's weather fatigue (as in, "I am SO OVER this frogging weather!") and work and whatnot. Believe me when I say that I can't wait for the spring, to get some green all up in here, for there to be something, ANYTHING, except a dirty old pile of slowly melting snow in my front yard.

Actually, I am starting to worry that I won't get any of my spring flowers. Granted, I don't have that many to begin with -- the front yard is heavily shaded, so in that patch I only get one tiny little anemic azalea, a couple of daffodils, some forget-me-nots, and then my prized, beloved bleeding hearts -- but I really wonder whether I'll get anything this year, because of all that grossness. Maybe I should look into a grow light and planting something in the house. Culinary herbs, maybe, or hemlock.

So anyway, we haven't been going out much or doing anything much except catching up on our TiVo'ed shows and missing MONUMENTALLY IMPORTANT HOCKEY GAMES, like oh my God of all the times to NOT watch the Olympics after I've been bitching about there being no hockey on the regular channels in prime time? Could I be a bigger butthead? Probably not. And I am really dragging out getting to the point here, aren't I?

What I was eventually going to be getting to is this: thanks to the awesome power of the Internet and also my car, I have made a couple of purchases lately that are very exciting, to me anyway, and so I will share them with you here. Please to enjoy. (NOTE: I paid for all this stuff out of my own pocket, in case the FCC is watching.

1. (Top left.) I got Shae a new bathing suit. In the interest of full disclosure, she already had a suit that fit, but I am not sure how much longer that is going to be true. I found a really cute designer suit at a members-only designer discount site and picked it up for her. I can't find a picture of the actual suit, but the picture is from the same designer, and it features the same color story. (Guess who has been watching "Project Runway" again?)

2 and 3. (Top right and bottom left.) Even when you're home and depressed, you gotta eat, and as much as I believe it is possible in theory, in practice I think it's pretty hard for man to live on Double-Stuf Oreos alone. So once in a while we have to go to the grocery store.

Yesterday we went to Wegman's, which is a bit of a treat for us. We don't usually shop there, since it's kind of out of the way. G put the kibosh on getting any fancy stinky cheeses but I did pick up a small bottle of their house-brand basting oil (2) and garlic-cheese finishing butter (3). And I don't know what else is in those bottles, but there is definitely some powerful magic, because it is impossible to make bad food with these things. I made a marinated pork tenderloin for dinner with roasted baby potatoes and roasted carrots -- the potatoes and carrots were seasoned with salt and pepper only, and the drizzled with the basting oil, and everything was PERFECT. I put a little bit of the finishing butter on my potatoes and it made me want to do the happy dance right there at the table.

These are NOT cheap ingredients -- I think we spent about $9 on both items -- but a little bit goes a long way, and I feel like I instantly became a gourmet cook. And I wasn't too shabby to begin with, so that is saying something, I think.

4. (Bottom right.) We also bought Shae a new shampoo that I have tried on myself, just to see. We're trying the Wen cleansing conditioner (in a different flavor than pictured) because she needs a lot of moisturization, but I don't want her hair to get greasy. So far we love the stuff, her hair felt thicker and healthier after only one use, and it makes a comb so much easier to get through her head. She still probably needs a haircut though, as soon as we can squeeze one in.

So that's pretty much been it for splurges for us, unless you count the $3 I spent at Wegman's yesterday on a 1 pt. bottle of freshly squeezed tangerine juice, which was seriously the best thing ever, and also how come nobody told me that TANG actually tastes like tangerines?

Neverending Story

Okay, now we are starting to approach insanity-pepper-and-space-coyote levels of crazy because holy tomato we are still opening Christmas presents.

We've been working on getting her to be more polite and stop asking "What do you have for me?" the second we walk in the door, but if this keeps up, that's never going to happen. Damn you, generous people, don't you realize you're jacking up our manners instruction?

The gifts were from one of the salespeople at work that I support. I like her anyway, so the bribes are totally unnecessary, but I appreciate them just the same. I have no adversion to other people treating my kid (as long as they don't try to spoil her). Last year she gave us a cute little dress that Shae wore for school pictures. This year, we got two "The Princess and the Frog" themed toys: a tea party set (yay! plastic!) and a Tiana doll.

Now, we haven't seen the movie, so I can't speak to whether it is good or not, or whether I like the character or not, or any of the stuff that my degree in Writing for Television, Radio and Film is good for. (No, really, that's my degree.) As you already know, I think "princess" is the single filthiest word in the English language, so the entire concept kind of gives me the dry heaves. (And no, I will not accept that The Cult of the Princess has become unavoidable in the raising of an American girl -- not on my watch!)

But at the same time, it's hard to be all about diversity when you're deliberately avoiding exposure to certain things, right? Our household is the very model of the modern poly-racial family -- we've got the white mom, the half-Latino dad, the bi-racial daughter, and even the partly Asian cat (Zöe is part Siamese) -- but what we aren't always tolerant of? Is different kinds of femininity than mine.

All of which is to say that it doesn't happen often, but sometimes we let her put on her crown and play princess. Sometimes. But only for a minute or two.

2009: The Obligatory Navel-Gazing Year In Review

Apparently it's part of the Union Rules for Bloggers to do one of these here look-back post thingies. And so I perused my 2009 archives for something to write about or some way to encapsulate everything that happened, and I basically keep coming back to this line from The Princess Bride: "Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up." Ha ha! Get it? Because I never shut up?

Anyway. Originally I asked my husband to poke through my archives for the past year and pick out one post from each month that he thought was pretty good so I can do up a Year-In-Review-Kind-Of-Something, but that did not work out as I had hoped, which is to say AT ALL, so basically you're stuck with this self-edited list of "My Best of 2009" and as you know if you read my blog every day or at all -- I am not very good at the whole self-editing thing.

• January -- 25 Things
• February -- Snowbird
• March -- Three Little Words 
• April -- (tie) Wordless Wednesday: Hallelujah and Just Like Starting Over
• May -- Sweet Caroline 
• June -- (tie) White Hot Spotlight and A River Runs Through It
• July -- Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves 
• August -- Who-ly McWhat? 
• September -- WTF!? Friday: September Already?
• October -- A Very Merry Un-Birthday 
• November -- A Week of Thanks: Day 7 
• December -- Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With Strings 

So. Sorry that I can't count to 12, but I guess you can count those two extra links as "bonus material" on the special edition DVD that was the past year. That's 2009, in a nutshell. Our year didn't suck as much as it did for many other people -- in fact, it was pretty damned good. The adoption was final, we celebrated our 10-year anniversary, and I somehow managed to turn 35 without having myself committed over it. Sure, we had our share of crud, like my husband losing his job and being out of work for 6+ months and the ongoing intermittent bouts of self-doubt, but really, we are luckier than a whole lot of people, because we have each other. And if you don't have each other, what's the point, really?

Coming up in 2010: The First Family Wedding Of The New Decade! More Pictures! A Kind Of Hybrid Project 365 Kind Of Thing If I Ever Get Around To Starting It! Still More Pictures! Possibly A Book Club Which Might End Up Related To My Hybrid Project365 Thing That I Haven't Decided Whether Or Not I'm Going To Start! Even More Pictures! Naps! And Yet More Pictures!

Please stay tuned.