The Girl is Crafty Like Ice is Cold

Reading: The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. Yes, still. This is a fabulous book if you want to learn every single detail of the life of BFrank. It's not a general overview. Whew. So it's long and sometimes tedious. I'm thisclose to the Boston Tea Party episode though so I can't put it down now! I need to finish it though so I can move on with my life... my pile of books to read and reread (Gone With the Wind!!) is just getting larger.

Coffee Intake: One cup a day! And by one cup I mean one single little scoop of grounds. Go Casey! Go Casey! I think it would be fairly easy at this point to drop that cup, but I enjoy it so much that for now I'm keeping it. At one cup a day I wake up feeling great rather than like I'm going to die if I don't get coffee. Although... that could also be due to the fact that I've been sleeping more than our cats lately.

Sleeping: a lot. A ton. A plethora. I'm not sure what happened but I've been falling asleep between 7 and 8 every night. Not that I was staying up late before... but man, I've been pulling a Jimmers (my dad) and falling asleep while tucking in C (like he used to do to me) OR coming out of a kid's room from tucking-in, turning on The Twilight Zone, and falling asleep on the couch 2 minutes later. Oh well, at least I'm still getting up early. Lots of people need 10 hours of sleep... like cats... and teenagers.

Crafting: Why, yes, I have been. Thanks for asking. I miraculously finished this:

I think I'm going to rip out the date and put it smaller in the corner. It takes away from the family. And hey, what's a cross-stitch without 50 million rip-outs and redos, right? In case you can't tell, it's our fam. From left to right: Max (or a rapid racoon?), Chris, Carolena (holding her lovies Whoppie and Howie behind her back), Nils with his "night-night" blankie and a dead racoon "King Julian," and moi with a cup of coffee and a book about polar exploration (in theory the white stitches on the book are a Compass Rose with bigger N/S arrows... in reality it's just a blob), and of course, Lieutenant Square Body, the fiesty Olive herself (with a purple calm collar on) rounds us out on the right.

I love it. If you want me to make one for your family I'm charging $400,000 due to the cost of labor. Man, cross-stitches would really be a breeze if it weren't for all of the "that looks weird" and ripping out and restitching.

I also pulled out my sewing machine yesterday and made a dress for Carolena. I used an old pattern that I tweaked (look at me, tweaking a pattern!). She LOVES it and when she tried it on yesterday so I could mark where to cut and hem she insisted that she wants it "looonnng" - so it looks like we're going long. Still needs to be cut and hemmed though.

et cetera: Yesterday I taught my son to wipe his nose on his sleeves. Yes, on purpose. It just breaks my heart to see Nils sitting there with a runny nose and he's snot going to get up and go get a Kleenex. So that's a habit I'll have to break later but for now his life will be all that much better. Tonight is Kinder-Expo at school! What?! I'm excited. C is just starting to show signs of restlessness at home. I think by the end of the summer she'll be jumping out of her skin to start kinder. I've got a date on the calendar to go to the beach with my mom and sister (woo!) and I'm feeling footloose and fancy free. I'm dying to see the new Christian Bale movie (*sigh*) so I need to either go next week or find someone (cough cough) to meet me halfway. Yesterday Nils pointed to the sky and yelled, "Bird!" but I heard "Batman!" and was about to put on some fresh lipstick in case it was Christian Bale. Unfortunately, it was a bird.

Arise and Seize the Day!

Oh yeah, and did I mention this happened?!?!

Somehow I have seen not one, not two... but FOUR shows in Houston in the last six months. What?! I'm one highfalutin' son of a gun! Don't ask me how. Fortune found me. Fame just crowned me!
Carolena sings the next line to that song as "I'm the king of Newark!"It's just as amazing as you imagine it to be.

Speaking of things that are just as amazing as you imagine them to be... holy cow... NEWSIES! What a fantastic musical. Better than the movie. Wellllll... actually, let's get Christian Bale on the stage (shirtless *cough* who said that?!) and then we'll call it better than the movie.

  Remember when I was thisclose to meeting Christian Bale and then we moved?!?! *SIGH* 

Nights out with Kelly are more than fun. People around us cease to exist. Although they do actually still exist and probably think we are insane. I think the next time our husbands get us theater tickets
for a sister night they should also spring for a hotel so that we can stay up all night eating queso and singing showtunes. And guys, "this ain't just newsies no more." Next season I have one must see show: Cabaret! "We have no troubles here! Here life is beautiful... The girls are beautiful... Even the orchestra, is beautiful!"

Dear Casey:

Kate Cho from Pearland asks:
Question: If we met this year, would you be my friend? Don't answer that!

Kate,
First of all Mrs. Cho, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Second, by saying, "Don't answer that!" you guarantee a long answer. Don't tell me what to do. You know I hate that.

Let's explore what it would be like if we met this year...
If we met right now then chances are one of us would bring up the topics of polar exploration and whether or not grown women should wear t-shirts. We would both be drinking a Diet Coke and talking about how we should really quit the stuff. We'd talk about how we just discovered GWTW and how many times we've read HP. We'd argue over whether it's better to be in Gryfindor or Slytherin.

I would comment on how your compost pile looks a lot like Marjory the Trash Heap and you would laughingly agree. You'd tell me about your plans for a bee hotel, and we'd obsess over the fact that there are people in this world who buy paper products besides toilet paper only to throw them away.

Chances are one of us would suggest Taco Bell for lunch and the other would say, "I can’t go to Taco Bell; I’m on an all-carb diet. How about McDonalds so the kids can go in the playplace?" Then we'd sit at McDonalds and eat fries and drink more dc and talk about how much fun it is to go to the beach and how someone could ever choose to live somewhere landlocked (saying the word "landlocked" as though its a cuss word). We would have already learned that we are both Episcopalian because somehow you discover that about someone within moments of meeting. Based on that fact alone we would have discovered at least eight people we know in common two of which being our relatives.

A mutual love for Tina Fey and Christian Bale and Kermit would carry our conversation through the lunch hour. Because the kids are busy playing and we've got nothing else to do that afternoon we'd splurge on iced coffees laughing about how they'll keep us up into the wee hours working on craft projects and watching The Goodbye Girl. We'd talk about how weird it was that we watched that movie so much as children. "Your parents let you watch that too?!?! Were you also allowed to eat macaroni and cupcakes for breakfast? Wait? What?! Me too!" Then we'd talk about what craft projects we've been working on lately.

After lunch you would invite me to join a book club or some sort of women's group you are currently involved with. I'd smile and say, "Sure. Maybe..." all the while wondering why someone so obviously weird and nothing like me wants to be my best friend forever...

 

I would in turn invite you to lift weights or to drink scotch on my patio or be facebook friends. We would stare at one another smiling and thinking, "I picked up a weirdo." Finally you would break the silence and say, "Nobody knows anything, Joe. We'll take this leap, and we'll see. We'll jump, and we'll see. That's life, right?" and we'd be BFF forever and I'd move into the house next door to you. 

Extry, Extry, Read All About It!

And when Carolena said, "Let's listen to Newsies on repeat" it became the happiest day of my life.
I have succeeded as a mother.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Always look on the bright side of life... do do do do do do do
Always look on the light side of life...

There are times in life when the Chris Hadfield perspective is the way to go. Last week in Kroger artichokes were in the markdown bin. Two for a dollar... what?! I bought all of them (six) and ate two by myself as an appetizer that night. Win! I ate the last four the next night. Yes, four. Win! The Redbox gave me two free movies the same day. Win! We had pizza for dinner. Win! I watched a Christian Bale movie (American Hustle. Bales still got it.*) and drank wine while working on arts and crafts. Win! I didn't spill any of my red wine on the white project I was working on. Major Win!

*In my mind I'm yelling, "Bales still got it!" in the same vein as when Buster yells, "Mom's still got it!" on Arrested Development. hahha... I love that guy.


I've always been a strong supporter of the Chris Hadfield outlook on life.

So, for today:
When my mom mentioned that the smell we've been obsessing over smelled like "The Treasure House" we finally decided it has to be human urine (Carolena.... we're looking at you on this one babe). Chris steamed the carpet and a company is coming to clean our furniture and stain guard it today. Win!...?

Nils slept all night the last two nights (errr... rather... none of us went to soothe him). So, win!

It's 930 in the morning and so far caffeine weening is going well. Win! Yes, it's early, but we're taking the wins where we can get them around here.

This fall has been nuts. I'm dubbing today "reboot day." The furniture is getting cleaned, the huge pile of stuff to get rid of that is threatening to take over my room is getting shipped out of the house. We're rebooting around here. Win.