Another gem from Pyzam

Funny Pics and Myspace Layouts at pYzam.com

Now, if only some really smart computer-programming geek (coughNICKcough) could change it entirely so it reflects my love of parentheses, that'd be greeeaaaat.

Musings...

WHY is it so hard for me to teach math? (I mean, other than the fact that I SUCK at it and HATE it? Oh, wait...maybe there's my answer.) Seriously, I try REALLY hard to not let my inherent dislike of the subject color my teaching, but sometimes (like today), when teaching something like simple subtraction or elapsed time, I think, "WHY IS THIS SO HARD? WHY CAN YOU NOT GET THIS?" (For those of you who don't know [and I can't imagine who you might be, because I'm pretty sure only Neil, Gwenn, Melody, Jen and Meeshi ever read this blog, haha], I homeschool my six-year-old daughter. I, myself, have already mastered simple subtraction and elapsed time. And did you like that I used a DOUBLE parenthetical question/statement here? I really could not be any more skilled in the use of parentheses.)
If anyone has any suggestions (other than, "Bag it, what does she need math for, anyway?") on how to make this more interesting/fun (hell, I'd settle for "not excruciatingly tedious and painful and taking up 90 friggin' minutes a day!), I'd greatly appreciate it.
I'm off now, to check into a parentheses rehab.
But seriously, I love them (obviously). Also, capitals. I wish there were MORE ways (other than bold! italics! many many exclamation points!) for me to convey my emotion. I think the only reasonable way is for you ALL to come over and dish with me. And bring wine. Preferably red.
Night, all.

The Mom Overture

I seriously don't think I'll ever get tired of watching this video.

My cuddle-bug

Abigaile is my cuddliest kid. The others like to have mommy-time, too, but Abbie just ALWAYS wants to be near me, on top of me, wrapped around me, on my lap, my head, my legs...(that attachment parenting thing seems to have backfired on me. I can't even go to the bathroom by myself anymore.) ;)
But it's moments like these that I don't mind so much...she's dozing on my lap while I sit at the computer, and her little (sticky...from what? not sure...ewww) hand curls around my finger like she did when she was a baby. Her thumb falls partially out of her mouth and she makes these funny little whistling sounds when she breathes (she's a mouth-breather like me). I had to snap my fingers at Katie to break her I'm-in-a-zombie-book-mode concentration to hand me the camera because I didn't want to break the spell.
I love being a mama.

Oddly enough...

our dinner last night did NOT feature any food coloring. Some colorful food (see pictures), but not Red Dye #40 or anything.
It was delicious, though, and I wanted to share the menu. It's a rare occurrence that I go "all-out" with the whole dinner thing. Most of the time, I feel like if my kids don't eat peanut butter and jelly twice in one day, I'm doing pretty good. But we had our dear friend Neil (I like to call him Nile, but probably no one else will get that, so I'll leave it alone) over to join us, and we had:
roasted chicken with garlic cloves
pilaf of brown rice, wheat berries and quinoa w/ curry
roasted zucchini, grape tomatoes and scallions
wilted spinach salad (again with the bacon! Yes, I love it! Back off!)
strawberry shortcake for dessert

It was outstanding, if I do say so myself (and I just did).
The pictures are of the veggies (because they were so pretty and colorful) and the dessert (because it was just all that). Also, the series of pictures of people are based on the fact that we were "so stuffed" that everyone had to show off their bellies. What a wacky bunch we are, huh?
(And no, there are no pictures of me showing off my belly. Like you need that kind of nightmare.)

Meeshi....

....sorry if I traumatized you w/ bacon pictures. (tee-hee)...I just saw on your blog that you linked to mine! It wasn't intentional (the visual, not the bacon-eating; that was intentional).
I did view your videos today; wow. Thank you for giving me something to think about.
(For those of you not-Meeshi, her blog is linked to your right. She posted a video about the recent beef recall that was VERY eye-opening, to say the least.)
Thank you, Michelle!

Bacon!

I ganked this video from jonathanbow.com

I loooooove Jim Gaffigan. (And bacon, too.)

Not to be outdone by the red pancakes, Jon presents...

Green eggs and .....bacon. Yes, we are a food-coloring family.
The sight of these eggs actually made me a bit queasy. The kids thought they were terrific, though. And (WARNING! WARNING!! TMI!!!!) Abigaile observed this afternoon that "Hey! I have green poopies from my green eggs!" Just be thankful I'm not posting a picture of THAT.

Legend of St. Valentine

So, the whole Valentine's Day thing just isn't really my....thing, but we had fun this morning, anyway. We made red (well, pink) heart-shaped pancakes and some cupcakes for the spaghetti dinner at our church tonight. (Yay for Red Dye #40! Just kidding. Well, it was food coloring. I don't really know what the chemical composition was, but between the pancakes, the cupcakes, the icing and the sugar I tinted red for the sprinkles, I used like half a bottle. Hope it's not toxic!)
The legend of St. Valentine makes me wonder WHERE the whole "let me give you flowers, chocolates, romance and hot sex" thing came in...well, the "hot sex" is, apparently a direct tribute to the fact that it was to counteract a pagan fertility festival. The whole thing is just bizarre.
Anyway, for those of you who always wanted to know, here's the story:
Legend of Saint Valentine

Faster than I thought, too! (thank you, Jen!)

70 words

Touch Typing

Well, crap.

Apparently the whole "clean house" thing is an ONGOING process, not a one-time deal. What the....?

My house is clean.

Well, for the most part. I still have some laundry in the washer/dryer and some more to go, but the sheets have been changed, beds made, bathrooms scrubbed, floor mopped, rugs vacuumed, BEDROOM DUSTED (that's a big one, can ya tell?).
Of course, to accomplish this, I had to postpone (until tomorrow) Katie's school day, ignore my children except to throw some cereal and then some Tuna Helper (barf, but they loved it) at them, and make the littles take a nap (which they're still doing). Katie helped tidy the kids' bedroooms, Micah wailed and moaned that "it's too hard, it will take too looooong!" and Abbie pretty much got in everybody's way and put lip gloss on her face about forty-six times. (Well, a girl's gotta be beautiful to do housework, right?)
I read somewhere that your environment reflects your mind and vice-versa. So I've gotten sucked into this downward spiral of depression and slothfulness that perhaps can be alleviated by getting my butt off the computer and cleaning my house! (Gasp. Gasp. Gasp.) Anyway, I'm tired and bummed that I didn't get a workout in today, but my house looks....well, not "awesome", but I wouldn't be embarrassed to have someone over. Even a reasonably tidy someone.

My kid is wicked smart

OK, I know I'm copying off of Gwenn's blog today (which seems to be a theme; sorry, folks, but she's a funny chick, and I pretty much don't have an original thought in my head)...but today, while I was checking my e-mail and drinking coffee, Katie was laying on the floor in the den, reading. When I glanced at her, she was so engrossed in her book (sounds like her mama, huh?) that she didn't even notice when I turned on the camera and started taking pictures. Just so ya know, that's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" that she's reading. (And you can save it if you're about to tell me about the evils of Harry Potter. Don't care. Love him.)

Oh, and for those of you that are nit-picky about things like this, yes, I DID vacuum the rug after I noticed how grimy it was. :)

The Daniel Fast

I have done the Daniel Fast before as a "fast", but this time around, I am doing it as an eating plan in my quest to get healthier and, yes, thinner. I was a bit leery at first of committing to an entire month, but I am loving it. (For those of you unfamiliar with the Daniel Fast, see this link:
Daniel Fast
This morning I found this site and can't wait to try some of the recipes! Recipes
Yum.

Yahoo for global warming!

It is 10 AM and already 66 here today. We will be having a picnic at the playground for lunch today, and it will be warm enough when Jon gets off duty for me to do my run outside instead of on the treadmill. It's amazing how weather affects us.
My sisters will get this: when Katie went outside to put the dog on her leash this morning, she came back and asked, "Mom, how many more days until Creation?" Since she asks this every 2-3 days, I was prepared with a countdown ticker on the computer (it's 134 days, 19 hours and 54 minutes as of right now). She said, "Oh, I thought it might be sooner, because the weather today feels like a Creation morning." I vividly remember discussing "Creation weather" with Gwenn on the way to our bus stop on spring mornings.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

One reason I love North Carolina

I took the kids to the beach to play today. At 3:30 in the afternoon, it was 70+ degrees here, and beautiful. When we got there, my friend Sharon was there with her boys and a friend of ours from our homeschool group arrived with her three girls shortly after. It was fun, just sitting and talking while the kids ran and got wet and sandy (bleccch). They brought me a pile of shells and some shell-pod thing...also some feathers which they insisted were "quills" and could I please stop on the way home and get some ink so they could write with them? They are all passed out in bed now, and I should be getting dinner, but I wanted to get this down so I can remind myself that there ARE good moments in my days. Sometimes I get too fogged down with other stuff to remember that, for the most part, my life is pretty neat.

OK, let me just explain what I mean...

by "shrieking harpy". Today has been really really really really bad in that department. I was diagnosed a while back with PMDD (pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder), which, as my midwife explained, is "PMS on steroids". Really. No fun. So I've been trying to get my medication straight for it, which is trial and error because everyone reacts differently to these types of medications. I was on Zoloft, which worked pretty well but I gained 20 lbs. In two months. Which of course didn't do much to make my mood very pretty. So she switched me to Prozac, and I can't tell if it's working or not. Some days I'm pretty normal (for me). Others, like today...well, it's like I have friggin' Tourette's or something. (Not the cussing part, but the can't-control-what-comes-out-of-my-mouth-even-if-it's-hateful part). My poor children are going to need therapy. I say that kind of jokingly, but not really.
The Bible says, "The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell...no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison." (bolding mine) That is seriously speaking to me today.
If you've got a minute to pray for me, I'd really appreciate it.

I know I've mentioned it before,

but in case you haven't heard, I am a shrieking harpy. Seriously. I might actually BE the worst mother in the world. Prozac isn't even helping with this tendency.
Psycho, I tell you.
I'm off to shower now so I don't punch a hole in the wall. (Ow. Like I could really do that; I'm such a wuss.)

I can't find my camera for photographic evidence,

but I DID finish folding my laundry yesterday. Of course, then the kids wore some MORE clothes, so I'm not entirely caught up yet. But at least it's not sitting in overflowing baskets in my kitchen, while the carpool mom is waiting for me to frantically dig through it, trying to find my son some socks to go to pre-school. (Notice the deliberate omission of the word "matching" as an adjective for "socks"...that's not even something that enters into my thinking anymore. I'm actually thinking of doing what a friend of mine does and having a "sock basket" in the closet; all socks go in there when they're clean, and everyone digs through and finds socks for themselves. Oooh, I'm liking the sound of this more and more.)
Anyway, that's my major accomplishment for the day. Today: ironing. (laughing out loud at the thought that I'd actually get it done) My friend Neil (who I probably should have married except for the whole pesky we-both-like-boys thing) bought me the GREATEST Christmas present this year: a steamer. It is so great.
Which leads me to another point: HOW did I get to the point in my life that I thought a steamer was the greatest Christmas present ever? HOW did I get to the point that I was raving about one on the internet?
I do not know, grasshopper. But that's my life for today.

OK, one more thing, then I'm REALLY folding laundry

My favorite "how many ____ does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" jokes are:

1. How many ADD kids does it take to screw in a light bulb?
- Hey, let's go ride our bikes!

2. How many emo kids does it take to screw in a light bulb?
- None, let them cry in the dark.

3. How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
- Potato.

4. How many divas does it take to screw in a light bulb?
- Just one, because she holds it up and lets the world revolve around her.

5. How many women with PMS does it take to change a light bulb?
- One! ONLY ONE!!!! And do you know WHY? Because no one else in this house
knows HOW to change a light bulb! They don't even know that the bulb is BURNED
OUT!! They would sit in the dark for THREE DAYS before they figured it out.
And, once they figured it out, they wouldn't be able to find the #&%!* light
bulbs despite the fact that they've been in the SAME CABINET for the past 17
YEARS! But if they did, by some miracle of God, actually find them, 2 DAYS LATER,
the chair they dragged to stand on to change the STUPID light bulb would
STILL BE IN THE SAME SPOT!!!!! AND UNDERNEATH IT WOULD BE THE WRAPPER THE
FREAKING LIGHT BULBS CAME IN!!! BECAUSE NO ONE EVER CARRIES OUT THE GARBAGE!!!!
IT'S A WONDER WE HAVEN'T ALL SUFFOCATED FROM THE PILES OF GARBAGE THAT ARE A FOOT
DEEP THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE HOUSE!! IT WOULD TAKE AN ARMY TO CLEAN THIS PLACE!
AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON WHO CHANGES THE TOILET PAPER ROLL !! . . .
I'm sorry. What was the question?


Add your favorites!

Tell me to get out of my pajamas

I know that one of the benefits of homeschooling is that I don't HAVE to get dressed. But seriously, this is ridiculous.
I'm stealing Gwenn's idea about life lessons and adding my own here:
1. Looking at video on popthatzit.com is probably the best weight-loss strategy ever.
2. If my dog were stupider, she'd forget to breathe in and out on a continual basis.
3. Dealing with 3 children who haven't slept enough without first dosing myself with caffeine and/or prozac is a bad, bad, bad idea.
4. Just thinking about folding my laundry is nearly as daunting as actually doing it. However, actually doing it means it will actually be done. Sigh...I hate how that works.