The Dog Days

Traditionally associated with madness and lethargy?
The dog days are here.

Anyone want to listen to the Whatever After series over and over and over for hours on end? Come to our house. That's what we've been up to. Hour after hour. Hours. Hours upon hours.

Carolena knows how to turn on the computer and pull up Hoopla and get the story started. Some days she wakes up before any of us and comes into the kitchen and starts listening.

The kids only want to be home. Listening to Whatever After. They've heard every single book in the series numerous times. They sabotage me when we leave the house by standing too close to me in the grocery store and whining until we come back home and press "play."

The ennui. The ennui!
And now the madness has set in.
The dogs days are here.

Headlines Don't Sell Papes. Newsies Sell Papes.

Reading: Theft by Finding by David Sedaris. Good Lord, I love David Sedaris. He seems like he would be friends with my sister and thus be forced to run into me at baptisms and bar mitzvahs. He would probably try to linger in the dining room doorway waiting for me to choose a dinner chair and then take the seat furthest from mine. He would avoid my eye and try to look very engaged in conversation with the person next to him. I would move though. You know I would. I would get up for more wine and then pull up a spare chair right next to David, squeezing out the bewildered guest who was innocently describing to him her latest oral surgery in detail. Later as they were driving home Hugh would laugh about David's inability to escape Kelly's weird younger sister.

Drinking: COFFEE. My caffeine intake is delightfully out of control. My migraines are in control (aaaaahhhhlelluia!) and thus the coffee floweth like... well... like coffee bean flavored hot water. We bought a new coffee pot that is programmed to automatically brew every morning. It is heavenly, like having a little robot in our kitchen that makes me coffee. In fact... it is LITERALLY a little robot in our kitchen that makes me coffee. I love it. I've gotten into that strange place in which I stay up too late and then sleep poorly and wake up and drink too much coffee. So then by the afternoon I drink more caffeine and thus the cycle continues. Not complaining though. Just how it is at the moment.

Eating: welllllll. This past spring was rather stressful to say the least and I may or may not have gained like 20 lbs. I finally pulled it together these past few weeks and am back on healthy foods. Unfortunately, I'm discovering that losing weight this time around isn't as simple as back when I was breast-feeding. Bummer. But, nonetheless, I'll just keep plugging along.

Carolena and Nils are really into audio books as of late. I mean really into them. Like, hour upon hour upon hour of listening to stories. We didn't leave the house for all of Monday and all of Tuesday because they were so engrossed. There aren't pictures or animation - just someone reading the books. I spent Monday crafting and cleaning and yesterday doing pretty much the same. By today I was about to lose my mind and forced them out to run errands with me. All they wanted to do was come home and eat lunch and listen to more of the book they were on. It's awesome. And weird. And awesome... but also weird.