Yesterday.  What did we do yesterday?  I began the day attempting to sleep in, but my daughter had other plans, including a bath and a dozen questions.  By the time my soaking wet husband and muddy 10-year old returned home from his football game, Grace and I were ready to head out in a quest for Halloween costumes.

So, the four of us went to a thrift store, bought costumes and then ate lunch together inside a Dairy Queen.  I cannot tell you the last time I was inside a Dairy Queen but I can tell you when I plan to go back again:  never.  My sneakers slid around under the table as I ate, unable to grip the sticky yet slick surface.  My shoes thought they were in a never-cleaned movie theater.  (But the Pumpkin Pie Blizzard–I ate half–was delicious.)

Then we fulfilled my 10-year old’s long-held desire to visit the Wagon Shop in our town. The Wagon Shop was built over a hundred years ago and contains rustic, old-fashioned artifacts, including two buggies the kids were allowed to climb.  We helped split cedar shakes and admired the square nails and leather shoes for horses.

Today we drove the hour to Mars Hill Church.  After church, our traditional lunch at Dick’s Drive In.  Oh, funny story . . . after we received our order, I told the woman behind the counter that the straw dispenser was empty . . . and then turned to walk away with the food while she shouted, “Hey!  Thirty-eight twenty-nine!  Thirty-eight twenty-nine!”  I couldn’t figure out what she was saying, took a few steps and realized that I hadn’t paid.  NICE!   I attempted to steal fast-food from the venerable Dick’s Drive In restaurant after attending church.  How mortifying.

We dropped off our boring teenagers at home and went to the Apple Squeeze festival, but they were out of apples!  So no apple squeezing took place.  The children were really disappointed.  However, Grace was able to ride a pony for the first time.  Then they both jumped in the bouncy-house thing and bought caramel apples.  The rain drops did not deter us from having as much fun as we could despite the lack of apples to squeeze.

After all the festivities, I abandoned my family and went to a movie.  (“Blindness” which I cannot recommend, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it didn’t make much sense to me.)  I stopped by Goodwill to browse the books.

Then tonight, I watched “The Amazing Race” with my husband.  I made him promise me that we will never, ever, ever, ever participate in “The Amazing Race.”  We are incompatible when we travel and under those circumstances, I am positive one of us would end up dead and since he is more patient than I, he would probably be the victim.  I’m just saying.

Fruit flies flitted about my house this week.  I blame the bananas.

But fruit flies are no match against a housewife with access to Google.

Here is the quickest, easiest way to get rid of them:  Pour a little red wine vinegar (or balsamic, but white won’t work) in a cup.  Add a drop of dishwashing liquid.  Gently mix.

The fruit flies drown themselves in the vinegar.

(This is what my life has become.  I am extraordinarily pleased to have killed four dozen fruit flies with a minimum of effort.)

For a decade, give or take ten minutes, I tried to mold my twin boys into my image. They have resisted all efforts and insist on being their own unique selves. I thought I had simply failed to try hard enough, that I did not repeat myself enough, or reinforce positive behaviors enough.

And along came my daughter.

By now, I realize that children come half-baked (ha ha, I just came up with that), already formed. They aren’t really like  lumps of clay, eager to be molded as much as they are Chia Pets upon which grass seed may or may not grow. (The metaphors! I need to go to sleep!)

But my daughter. I want to tell you that I recognize myself in her. She has spent an inordinate amount of time penciling numbers (up to 102) and letters on notebook paper, all within the lines. I suggested, “You could do that later,” and she said, “No, I need to do my work first.” (My sons still cannot write in the lines of notebook paper, much to my chagrin.)

She loves to run, run, run. Playing tag is her favorite game. When I was in first grade, I loved to (literally) chase boys at recess. I was the fastest girl in my elementary school. I loved to run.

Now, maybe you just see the portions of yourself that you want to see in your child. Maybe. My husband thinks she is just like me–and he says that when she’s being particularly sassy. I AM NOT LIKE THAT! (Okay, maybe a little.) She amuses me.

That’s all.

“Mom,” she said, “When I’m an old lady will you be dead?”

Alas, that’s probably true because I was at an “advanced maternal age” when I gave birth to her after a quick labor. (She was born at home, a fact I am inordinately proud of, a fact that does not come up in casual conversation, so I will just casually mention it here. In fact, both of my younger children were born at home, in rented birthing tubs. One labor lasted 43 hours; the other lasted 6 hours.)

They were also unplanned pregnancies, little jolts of surprise. So, when she was born, I was 37 years old, almost 38. And I just may be the oldest kindergarten mom. Funny, because 10 years ago when my twins were in kindergarten, I was also the oldest kindergarten mom, almost.

One of the weird things about aging is not feeling old. I feel like the same person I was when I married my husband twenty-one years ago. And then I will see the face of a professional football player on Monday Night Football and I will say, “Boy, he looks young,” and my husband will say, “He’s twenty-three,” and I said, “I could be his mother!”

But I’m not because my children came along when I was getting old.

Do you have those days when you cannot believe how unattractive you look, when you curse the unkempt mop of hair on your head and wonder at how fat your face looks when you gain twenty pounds? Or is it just me? I would have just stayed under the covers today and eaten ice cream if I weren’t such a responsible (OLD!) person.

Being old is inevitable. Unless you die.

The first month of school has not yet ended and my daughter has her second cold.  Thus, we stayed home from church today, to spare the other Sunday School students from exposure to the germs.  Although she played all day, she suggested tonight at bedtime that maybe she should stay home from school tomorrow, though I think if you are well enough to play, you are well enough to go to school.  (Plus, Mommy wants her morning!)

So, we’ll see.

Today, I relented and took the two youngest kids to the Dollar Store (they love that place) and then bought pizza for lunch.  As soon as everyone was chowing down on pizza, I skedaddled out of the house and went to a movie (“Lakeview Terrace,” a rather boring thriller that I cannot recommend mainly due to its boring-ness).  I also went to Value Village, my favorite thrift store, and found some nice long-sleeved shirts which I will probably never wear due to our never-ending summer (eighty degrees tomorrow!).

For dinner on Sunday nights, I’ve been preparing chocolate gravy and biscuits.  Anybody ever heard of such a thing?  My Houston-born husband introduced me to this strange meal.  (The “gravy” is really a boiled chocolate syrup.)  The kids all love it, as does my husband, but I can no longer eat it.  (Too sweet.)

After dinner, I knocked on the neighbor’s door to ask permission to trim branches from their tree.  The mail carrier left me a sticky note on my mail last week asking me to trim them since they hit his windshield on his way to my mailbox.  So, the neighbors and I hacked away at the branches, chatted for a bit and then I trimmed ivy along my driveway.  (The prior owner of this house planted all manner of annoying vines and bushes–English ivy and laurel hedges–which are always threatening to overtake our house.)  This week?  I must plant daffodils so that I have a reason to live next February.

I am boring.  I know it.  I apologize if you are only now just figuring that out and would like a refund.

My work on the Internet has revealed some hilarious mis-heard phrases.

Just tonight, I read a paragraph by a woman who bemoaned her husband’s “carpool tunnel” injury.

Last week, a woman asked for others to share some “old wise tells.”

Someone else mentioned a “cereal killer.” A mom announced herself as a “SHAM.” (FYI: SAHM stands for stay-at-home-mom.)

A mom explained that “we were also dumb-shocked.” Another said, “I knew it would be a mute effort.”

Then there was the woman who described being “trapped between a rock and a hard plate.”
And the one who “lost my composer.” (I picture Beethoven tucked in the lost-and-found at the Police Department.)

All this makes me think that some people are “blind-sighted” when it comes to understanding lingo. (Then again, who am I to laugh? I was puzzled until adulthood by the advice to wear clean underwear in case you have an accident, because I believed “accident” was just a polite way of saying “peeing your pants” and if you peed your pants, why would it matter if they were clean?)

Maybe she was talking about me when the lady said, “She’s not the sharpest kangaroo in the shed.”

I am waiting for a thought worthy of blogging, but alas, my life has turned into an un-comedy of errors. If I continue to wait for a noble reason or profound thought to share then this blog will echo with the sound of silence or the chirping of crickets.

However, life hasn’t been as dull as I prefer. I offer these three anecdotes as proof:

1) The chicken and the chicken. On Mondays, my 10-year old does not have football practice, so my husband gets to come home from work at 6 p.m. instead of heading straight for the football field. In anticipation of this, I decided to cook a decent dinner and plopped a chicken into the Crock-pot first thing in the morning, even before I went for my morning walk.

Mid-afternoon, I noticed something amiss. I’d turned the dial on the Crock-pot to “warm.” At that temperature, it would take a raw chicken a week and a half to actually cook. So, I cranked that baby up to high and decided to bake frozen pizzas for dinner instead and save the chicken for another day.

Except that last night, after it was finished cooking, I left it on the counter at midnight instead of pulling it off the bones and putting it in the fridge. So, this morning, I tossed the whole chicken, pulled a second chicken from the freezer, defrosted it in the microwave, washed out the Crock-pot and plopped the chicken inside.

I carefully turned the knob to “high” and then double-checked. Yes, still “high.” Awesome.

At about 3 p.m., I noticed something amiss. The Crock-pot was unplugged. One of my teenagers knocked the plug out while grilling a sandwich in an electric sandwich press. He didn’t notice this until I pointed it out (“WHO ate a grilled sandwich?!”) and then he denied responsibility. “Someone stomped in the kitchen and it fell out of the wall.”

At that point, I stomped with great drama and power in the kitchen to demonstrate that the plug would not fall out of the wall due to stomping.

(The chicken was cooked by 8 p.m., when my husband returned with my 10-year old from football practice. So they had chicken. The rest of us ate mashed potatoes and corn-on-the-cob at our usual dinner-time. No chicken as it was not quite cooked.)

2) The bus stop. Monday at 12:05 p.m., the phone rang. The school district was on the line letting me know that the bus driver called them and he was waiting at the bus stop with my kindergarten-aged daughter. I hung up the phone and stupidly sprinted down the street to meet the bus which had pulled to the side of the road. (I should have driven the Giant Green Van, but I was in too much of a panic to think straight.)

This might be my greatest humiliation of the week. (Month? Year?) I actually forgot about picking up my baby girl from the bus stop. I may have forgotten to mention this to my husband, Mr. Safety, so. . . hush. Let’s just keep this between us.

3) The television. Do not mock me, but I am in severe distress because our living room television took one last breath yesterday afternoon and then died. Push the button to turn it on, half the screen appears, the other half totally blackness, and then the television turns itself off within five seconds. Sure, we have four other televisions, but three of the four are small, portable sets that the kids use for video games . . . one is in my daughter’s room (I know, television is bad, it’s rotting our brains, kids shouldn’t have them in their rooms, I know, I know, I know).

But this one is in the living room and it keeps me company all night while I work (until midnight). I am somewhat addicted to my Digital Video Recorder which lets me pause live television and records programs so I can watch them at my leisure.

I moved one of the small televisions into the living room but it’s not the same. So, because we have nothing better to do, we have to figure out how (and when) we can get the television repaired. (And when I say “we”, I mean my husband.)

This is bumming me out. (But at least I remembered to retrieve my daughter from the bus stop today and I placed the cooked chicken in the fridge tonight.)

Dear Family,

When I buy things in bulk, I intend to use up one container before we open the next. Therefore, I am bewildered to find two opened containers of these items in the fridge:

Parmesan cheese

Mayonnaise

Mustard

Ketchup

Cucumber Chip Pickles

Sour cream

You might have noticed that I consolidated the four opened Cheerio boxes (plain and multi-grain) into two boxes. I am begging you not to open another box of cereal until the four open boxes are empty.

Also? Whoever smooshed the mayonnaise sandwich into the couch is fired. You’re fired!

Love,

Mom

p.s. Please flush the toilet.

When I pull my hair back, I see two gray ones.  When I raise my eyebrows, my entire forehead furrows into rows which never really settle back down.  My chin hosts a collection of (regularly plucked) stiff bristles.
I’m getting old.

I don’t mind the fact that my boss is younger than me, that I could practically be the kindergarten teacher’s mother, or that I’m almost old enough to by my own children’s grandparent.  Truly, I don’t because I value life experience and I suspect that I’m a little smarter now than I was when I was earning straight A’s in high school.

But I’d like to stop now.  I’d like to just stay in my mid-forties, thank you very much.  I’m not interested in aching joints and lagging memory and sensible shoes.  Okay, so I am interested in sensible shoes (Chuck Taylors are sensible, right?).  I don’t want my cheeks to sink into jowls.  I’d like to avoid dependency on Depends.

I find the movement of time and its consequences so puzzling.  Weren’t my teenagers just babies a moment ago, unable to sass me because they hadn’t yet acquired language?  Wasn’t I just trying to get pregnant and moaning about my empty house and crying on Mother’s Day because I had no one to give me a Carnation?

These children are constantly changing–bringing home papers with tidy numbers printed in crooked rows, playing raucous music with words I cannot understand, laughing at jokes I don’t find amusing–and I am bewildered, wondering where time has gone, even though I see its ravaging marks on my face.

I’ve heard of sailors at sea who veer off course by an inch and end up hundreds of miles from their destination.  I think I’m heading in the right direction, though I guess we won’t know until we land on shore and hope that we disembark on a friendly tropical beach and not on a snake-infested island without fresh water.  (Sometimes, the storms rage and I despair.)

Meanwhile, I’m going to leave those gray hairs because I have a feeling I’ll end up bald if I start to pluck every single gray.

When I was growing up, a traveling circus set up a tent at Jennings Park. At least that’s how I remember it. I’m sure there were clowns, but I can’t remember much beyond that. Perhaps I would have remembered the circus if I’d been to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus In the Loop rip . Seriously, click that link and a train will start making noise. Beware, and mute your computer if you must, but click because that site is just that much fun.

Now, the circus is probably coming to a town near you. Here are some dates and places:

Indianapolis, IN – Sept. 4-7, 2008
Kansas City, MO – Sept. 10-14, 2008
Grand Rapids, MI – Sept. 18-21, 2008
Denver, CO – Oct. 2-13, 2008
Boston Oct 8-13, 2008
Cleveland, OH – Oct. 24 – Nov. 2
Chicago, IL – Nov. 6 – 30, 2008
St. Louis, MO – Nov. 6-9, 2008
Auburn Hills, MI – Nov. 12 – 16, 2008
Highland Heights, KY – Feb 27 – Mar. 1, 2009
Revolution Summer move
Cincinnati, OH – Mar. 4 – 8, 2008

A 20% discount code for Ringling Bros. Circus (Code: MCC) is valid for the circus shows in the cities listed above.

There are other special offers and coupon codes–you just have to click here. If you have a newborn baby, you can get a free ticket for your baby–with no expiration date, so hey, save it for a graduation gift or wedding present.

The tour schedule can be found here. Have fun!