A Good Day
I thought I was having kind of a crazy day. I started my period yesterday, and I had to do a newsletter for a non-profit, and we still had a bare Christmas tree just sitting around undecorated. We got it on Friday and didn’t even have time to decorate it until late this afternoon, and the kids were just driving me batshit crazy about all the Christmas stuff in piles that wasn’t put up yet.
But then my wonderful husband went to the store for tampons for me when I really didn’t feel like it. He took the kids with him. Then he came home, cooked me dinner, and made brownies for dessert. He is mine, girls. Mine, all mine! Taken!
Then, as I was eating a Brownie bowl of shame, a friend sent me a v. nice message about enjoying my blog (consider this your shout out!) and now I kind of feel pretty happy.
Not a bad day. Lots to be thankful for - I can’t complain. Nothing like good friends, a hot brownie, and a full box of tampons to turn your day around.
Our Tooth Fairy is Retarded
So, Rollie came home from school having lost another tooth. I think it’s his . . .fourth? They are becoming a blur. Interestingly, only one was pulled at home - the rest were at school. I guess maybe he gets bored in class and decides to wiggle it until it comes out.
Oh, and the Tooth Fairy? Well, ours is retarded. . .
Rollie woke up this morning, ran downstairs all excited that the Tooth Fairy had left him a dollar, and left his tooth, too! Upon being questioned in isolation, the Tooth Fairy confirmed that the tooth was indeed taken last night when the dollar was left. . . so. . . there must have been an older tooth still in the pillow, one that she missed on a previous visit.
So, the Tooth Fairy cost us a dollar. Good thing I coupon to make up for fiscal disasters of this nature.
The Gift of Dreaming
Do you remember your dreams? Do you think they are a message you are supposed to receive and think on? Or are they just your brain’s way of working things out for you while your body rests?
Mine are very vivid, in color, and the ones closest to waking up are sometimes so real that when I do wake up, i confuse the dream with reality. I often talk as I am waking up, as I did the other morning when I said, “There are no more colors” to Todd and Tiller. I wish I could remember what that means, but that one is lost to the ether.
Todd and I talk about dreams often, because he rarely remembers his. When he does remember them, though, they are doozies. (Perhaps he will comment with the story of his ghost dream. I cannot possibly do it justice, it is so funny. When I match that dream story with the sounds he was making while having the dream, I am overcome with giggles.)
I had a wonderful dream last night. Scary and vivid and special, and tied to things going on in my life. We have been watching The Walking Dead on AMC. (I you aren’t watching it, you are dumb. It is awesome, and also, set in Atlanta, which makes it even more fun!) So, the beginning of my dream involved living with a group of survivors or refugees, somewhere out in the wilderness, not unlike the survivor group on The Walking Dead. (Or like the one that I started writing a short story about after having a similar dream while in NC and having seen a Walking Dead episode the night before, then dreaming about that!) Except that, last night, we were not Zombie Apocalypse survivors.
We were survivors of some sort of alien attack. This was no doubt prompted by the announcement yesterday that NASA will have a 2:00 PM Thursday press conference to discuss an astrobiological finding that impacts the search for extraterrestrial life in our universe. The buzz about this press conference was all over Twitter yesterday, and in true nerd fashion, I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day. Not surprisingly, it showed up in my dream.
So, in my dream, there is little explanation for how my group ended up with one, but I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO FLY ONE OF THESE GUYS:
I flew this in my dream. Be jealous. Be very jealous.
Have you ever had a flying dream? I don’t have them very often, but they are the absolute best dreams out there. It is the most exhilarating feeling in the world to soar over things in dreams. (Ironic, considering I am phobic about both heights and flying.) Except of course, flying dreams pale in comparison to one other kind of dream: the dreams where you get to hang out with deceased loved ones.
At some point during my dream, it was announced that good aliens were coming to earth, or maybe we had befriended the original attacking forces. I don’t know which, in that weird way that dreams are logical at the time, but never make sense when you try to describe them to others. But i was in downtown Atlanta and there were tons of people there, hanging out in the shadow of the Equitable building, waiting for the Alien Welcome Parade to begin. (Shadows of DragonCon, i suppose?) There were people I went to high school with, parents of people I went to high school with, some of Todd’s friends from Auburn, and pretty much any other random person that I can think of ever having met in my life. That guy that served me and Todd poolside rum drinks in Belize and told us about the Temptation Island folks? I think he was in my dream, too.
So, in my dream, i am rushing to find a good spot, and someone links arms with me as I am walking, and I look down and immediately recognize the green and white outfit my Grandma Smith wore. Apple green polyester background, with white polka dots. It was one piece, I think. Head-to-toe green and white polka dots. And grandma was beside me, walking damn well (she was a little wobbly there in the last few years, but not in my dream) and she was just SO EXCITED TO BE MEETING ALIENS! My grandmother was thin, wobbly, gray, and psoriatic. But her smile? Grandma had a million dollar smile, and one of the funniest, most contagious laughs I have ever heard.
And me? I went to bed last night worrying about all of the things I had to do today. And I woke up this morning having received a precious gift. I got to link arms with my grandma, celebrate something happy, see her smile, and hear her laughter. And today, I feel as if I have been visited by someone special, and I know there are things in this universe that we will never explain, or understand, but for which we must have respect.
Favorite Albums of 2010?
What are yours? I am starting to think about mine, and since i don’t have as much time as I once did to sit around and read about music, I started wondering what great albums I am missing out on.. . .
What are your favorites?
Lego Nap
We just got on 85 and both kids and both dogs are already asleep, Rollie clutching his Star Wars Legos box in his arms.
Happy Place
Slept until ten. Coffee on the patio with my college roommates, overlooking the fields, Table Rock in the distance. Then, eggs, caramel croissant casserole, pancetta and mimosas. About to go for a hike.
I am in my happy place.
By This Afternoon
I will be here.
Can’t wait.
California Is Scary
According to Tiller. . .
We were sitting around the kitchen table and somehow California came up.
Tiller blurted out, “California is scary!”
“What? I said. “Why is California scary? You have never even been to California!”
“But there’s that hotel.”
I stare blankly at her.
“Hotel?”
She stares at me like I am the dumbest person on earth. How do i not get it, when it is so obvious?
“The hotel, mama. . .the one from the song, with the monster?”
I blink.
“The Hotel California?”
“Yes,” she said, completely matter of fact.
“It has a monster?”
“Yes, mama.”
“Oh.”
So, i sang the whole thing to myself, and sure enough, there is the following line:
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast
Wow. Hysterical. I really didn’t know she was paying that much attention to the lyrics to all the songs we listen to in the car.
The Blends Project
Anybody else get this in their head while doing the Blends project?
For those of you who don’t have a first grader at my kid’s school, the Blends Project is 30% of their grade. Basically, the teacher gives you a list of 20 “blends” - blends are letter combinations, such as “br” and “ch.” The kids have to come up with four words for each blend (CH: Choir, Chorus, Chorizo, Chair). Then, the kids have to draw or cut out pictures representing each of the words. Each cutout must be of a size that it will fit into one fourth of one 20th of a large piece of poster board. Confused? Yeah, the kids are supposed to divide their poster board into 20 equal parts, and each of those parts will contain four pictures. The pictures are then labeled with the name of the word they represent.
Note that I say “the kids” are supposed to be doing all of this. As if kids in first grade can do all of this. Me? I am lucky, in that my kid learned all his blends two to three years ago, so he had no problem coming up with his own words. (Don’t even get me started on the fact that they are not differentiating this project at all for the kids who are strong readers and already know their blends.) Other parents are not so lucky - they have to help their kids figure out four words for each blend.
What ends up happening is that the parents then go to the computer and google clipart that corresponds to the word. Then they print it all out for the kid to cut out. Then the parent has to divide the squares on the poster board. (I mean, come on! How many first graders could figure that out?)
So, basically, if the kids don’t know their blends yet, then the parents end up doing half the work. Even for my kid, who knows his, I end up having to do the clip art portion (took me TWO HOURS last night to google, and cut and paste, and print, the 80 images.) The plus to this is that Rollie and I spent some quality time together. By quality time, I mean that he and i did the images, while Tiller cried under the computer desk, rolling around at my feet, wailing about how bored she was, and I didn’t finish my laundry.
A negative to this whole thing might be that my son did not learn a DAMN thing. Oh! Except for the following “enlightening” images that came up while searching for words he already knew how to spell.
Interesting things that come up on Google Images while searching for pictures of words for Blends project:
drug (people smoking pot, shooting heroin, laying passed out next to an open and spilled bottle of pills with a bottle of bourbon in hand, pot leaf, bong, bag of weed, cartoons with needles hanging out of people’s arms.)
brown (pile of poop, naked African American woman, James Brown mugshot)
Drown (pictures of drowning victims, scary illustrations of drowning people)
Drink (OH GOD, Alt+Tab!)
frenzy (wolves tearing apart some animal, creepy cartoons with people foaming at the mouth, zombie melee)
prank - (one KKK poster, a rear end mooning the camera)
glowstick (rave photos, symbols of hands holding glowsticks up in the air, Rollie: “What’s a rave?”)
spank (Are you kidding me? Me: Don’t you want to pick another word? That one is kind of negative. Rollie: Why? It’s just hitting on the bottom? Me: sigh. Ok. [praying as i hit google], Oh, no, that one is not good. Rollie: Mama, what is? Me: Don’t worry about that one, honey.)
spa (who knew there were so many asian “spa” pictures online?)
blonde? (I don’t even need to describe what came up for this one, right?)
Slip (lots of disturbing photos and cartoons about the band slipknot. R: Mama, what is a slipknot? Me: A kind of knot. R: For putting around your neck?)
Gee. Education is great.
Annual Temporary Annulment Day 2010
So, you might have heard a little rumor. It has something to do with me and a streak.
Four games. I would love to make it five, but I don’t see it happening. If it does happen, it will be amidst too much hoopla, and it will be bittersweet and contested anyway. Sigh.
Scratch that. I’ll take it.
There is something larger at stake, though. Not just four in a row in a House Divided. But my record at Auburn games. I have a bit of streak going there, too. I have never seen Auburn win a game in my presence.
I’ve been to a number of Auburn games, and not just games where they play Georgia (although those have been the sweetest). Auburn has lost every game I attended. I am the kiss of death. i am the black widow. One year i was the Blackout Widow. (By far the most beautiful Annulment Day yet.) Bama game last year? That was me. Unexpected loss to some crappy Florida team? (Florida Atlantic? Florida A&M?) Yeah, that was me too.
Cue Sympathy for the Devil.
The best thing about tomorrow is. . . well, duh. No children for a day of drinking. Second best thing? We have nothing to lose and they have everything to lose. Worst case scenario, I get really loaded, we lose catastrophically, and some really great Auburn friends rag on me for a day. I think i can take it. I mean, they took it the last four years in a row.
Plus, the look on my husband’s face while Bulldogs players and fans cranked dat Soulja Boy? No one can take that very magical, electric moment away from me. Or erase it from his memory. But just in case. . .
Sweet dreams, sugar.
