It's Not Easy Being Green

First published on Home Educating Family. Republished with permission by the team, and the author (that's me).

Women have something in them that fools them into thinking they are Super Woman. Well, for me it’s Wonder Woman (I even had the Underoos to prove it. And the aluminum foil bracelets. And the crown). So, when I get sick, I live in total denial for several days.

“I’m fine,” I croak, crankily.

I gargle garlic juice and take hot showers. I drink huge amounts of tea and put my hair up so it doesn’t stick to the back of my clammy neck. I google my symptoms and realize I’m dying of a flesh eating disease. Eventually, the sore throat begins to get worse. Where a scratchiness was a moment ago, a full on forest fire the likes of which California has never seen, is breaking out now. My voice begins to go, which small totally children take advantage of.

“What’d you say, Mommy?” I hear as they run off to wreak havoc and take over the free world, “We didn’t hear you! Did you say DO put the baby on a leash and DO dress up the neighbor’s cat? OKAY!”

My insides turn to sandbags. Is it my kidneys and liver and spleen shutting down, or am I just exhausted? Do I even need my spleen? What’s with the sudden bouts of narcolepsy?

Then the coughing begins, and I sound like a bull frog with a smoking problem. I hack up my spleen and learn having it on the inside of me was optional after all. Like my tonsils, wisdom teeth, and appendix. Which all seem to be dripping out my nasal cavity.

Still, I do not admit to being sick! By golly, I may be a little under the weather. But I can beat this. For crying out loud, I fly an invisible plane and karate chop Nazis for a living, I think I can beat a wee little head cold and still teach phonics! Pshaw!

Speaking of air planes and Nazis, I start to see strange things. Am I hallucinating due to a fever, or are there really purple life size Gummy bears in my office? Do I embrace them or eat them? Why is it so hot in here?

Still, I do not admit to any illness. On the sly, I may be sipping Nyquil like it’s a juice box, but that’s a total coincidence.

I.

Am.

Not.

Sick!

As if to punish me for ignoring them, the Porcelain Throne Gods demand a sacrifice and a thorough worshipping at their alter. Knees knocking together, I answer their call. They are angry with me and I have to prove my loyalty to them by sticking around for oh, about three days.

I haven’t combed my hair or put on make-up in a week. I keep my bangs slicked back with homemade, organic hair gel (boogers and spit). My nose looks like I was stung by a mass of killer hornets with pink Kool-Aid in their stingers. I’ve gone through so many rolls of toilet paper for blowing my sore snozz that I’ve had to ration the remainder in the kid’s bathroom: three squares for #1, five for #2. We can’t have company over because they might have to use the bathroom. Also, since I have The Plague (or is it The Black Lung?) they wouldn’t want to come in anyway.

Now comes the point where I admit I might be sick. After a full week of hearing people in my life tell me to go to the doctor, I am finally at that space. That space where I can admit I need help. Help of the narcotic variety, that is. A little Codeine? Don’t mind if I do. A Tylenol cocktail? Why, yes, please. Bubble gum flavored antibiotics? Come to mama.

Of course, deciding to see a doctor and actually seeing a doctor are too entirely different scenarios. In the scenario in my mind, I call, they answer, I go in, they are glad to see me, I get medicine, they say goodbye, I come home. What really happens:

I call.

They don’t answer.

I have some lovely flute music to occupy myself while I am on hold for thirteen years.

Christmas comes and goes. My baby graduates from college.

Eventually, they come back on the line and what do you know? I’m still sick.

They can squeeze me in in three days.

Three days?

I’ll be dead in three days, I say.

Okay, come in now, they agree.

I go in.

They are busy. Small children sneeze on me, and one licks me.

I read Redbooks from 1989. Crickets chirp. Tumbleweeds tumble by. I’ve heard every song Michael Bolton ever sang on the soft rock station. Twice.

They call me back.

I explain my symptoms. Well, not really. My voice is gone at this point, so I charade my symptoms.

Flailing wildy, I make gestures and do a little improv interpretive dancing.

You don’t feel well? The doctor asks, as I back flip over the table and mime Scarlet Fever. I land to a 9.5 from the Romanian judge.

I nod, in relief.

Would you like something for that? The doctor asks.

I embrace him fondly and get snot on his coat.

He writes me prescriptions. I mime a marriage proposal but he declines.

The thought of driving to the pharmacy to pick them up makes me cry, but I am strong! I am Wonder Woman! I am invincible!

Before I brave the horrors of the pharmacy, I need a nap. And some tea. Maybe a sandwich.

Afterwards, I feel a little better. I skip the prescriptions, toss what’s left of the Nyquil, undress the neighbor’s cat, and comb my hair.

I hear my husband sniffle gently.

Horror crosses his face. “I’m so totally sick! No one’s ever been so sick! I’m calling in sick! Honey, I’m sick, would you make me some soup while I go immediately to the doctor? I’m sick!”

Ah, my hero. My manly man. He of the bulging biceps and raging testosterone. My G.I. Joe.

“Don’t get too close,” he gasps, as I rub his chest with Vapor Rub. “I wouldn’t want you to catch this…don’t want you getting sick…I can take it though…is my soup ready? My soup, cuz I’m sick? Man, I’m so sick,” snarf. Blurp. Snoffle. “I’m so glad you didn’t catch this, honey. Aren’t you glad you didn’t get sick?”

“Don’t worry,” says I. “I never get sick.”

Pickled dog

I gave birth to a hermit.  Once upon a time, he looked like this:

Now he looks like this:

I have problems with my itty bitty baby becoming this.  Here they are in no particular order:

1.  All his laundry consists of is pajama bottoms and the occasional pair of underpants.

2.   He is eating all my groceries at an alarming rate.

3.  He may be the first homeschooler to live up to his unsocialized reputation.  I'd hate for my kid to be the one to set us homeschoolers back twenty years.



Now that his sisters are old enough to babysit, the child refuses to accompany me anywhere.  People are beginning to think I made him up.  When we force him to set his pudgy barefeet out of his abode, you'd think we'd suggested that he chew off his own eyebrows or something.

Anyway, the point of this post is not my agoraphobic son but #2 on the list above.  I just got back from grocery shopping AGAIN.  I spent $140 and I didn't even buy coffee or milks (I say milk in the plural form because of G's allergies which he's mostly beaten but he still drinks almond milk).  I didn't splurge on anything except for the Chedder and Sour Cream potato chips which actually begged me to take them home and when I refused, jumped into my cart.  It was odd, but sometimes these things happen.  I didn't want to make a scene so I bought them.  Anyhoo...I feel completely grumpy about this cost of living thing right now.

Pickles were expensive!!  Pickles!!  Rejected cucumbers!

Nasty looking questionable meat products were expensive!  I kind of think I bought dog.

I only bought one type of cheese!  Who lives like that??

I passed by the Hagan Daaz with a self control that would utterly impress you and also made me weak kneed and breathless.  But pass by I did!

I didn't buy bread.  I didn't buy wine.  I didn't buy cereal.  I didn't buy hair products or make up or yoga pants or toilet paper or jewelry or real estate.  The only non-edibles I bought were deodorant for my hubby's pits (and why Old Spice makes Original so dang impossible to find is beyond me.  Can I start a petition or something?  Who's with me?) and small paper plates and a children's cold medicine.

This will only get us through a week.  Am I spending too much?  Am I unrealistic in my wishes to spend less?  There were some organics in there, but I bought them at Grocery Outlet for a fraction of the price...

We are a family of five in case you didn't know.  The three chitlins are homeschooled, thus they spend all their time on my couch, eating.  This could be part of the dilemma.  I hate to smack food out of their mouths more than twice a day.

What do you spend?

What is your favorite cheap meal?

Either make me feel better or school me in how to save money!  That was not a request.  Seriously.  Comment.  Or I will find you.  Right at dinner time.

I like steak.

I'm A Veterinarian Cuz I Don't Eat Meat

"There's no food in your food."  - Joan Cusack in Say Anything.


"I think this horse has turned..." - O Brother, Where Art Thou?


This post is brought to you by Food, Inc, FoodMatters, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, several other books/magazines/documentaries, and my own conscience. Any resemblance to your eating habits is entirely coincidental. 


First of all, yes, this will be a slightly serious blog (scramble to get out now if you must, Chicken BobBabyPants) and no, I am not giving up meat and going vegan.  Although if the payoff is to have Shania Twain's rocking abs, then I may reconsider.


But I am going to try to change the way I eat and shop and cook and I need you guys, my little sweetie muckins, to keep me accountable and maybe even join me in my journey.


I don't mind eating meat.  I'm an animal lover as much as the next gal; I have my doggy, Mr. Milo Farts-A-Lot, and I've had horses and chickens and kitty cats, but I'm not hypocritical about killing and butchering and eating Bessie the bovine.  I love all meats really; besides the boring ol' chicken breast I've had goat, bear, bison, alligator, lamb, octopus, and I don't really turn up my nose at anything someone feels like cooking for me.  After all, I don't understand why us white bred (or is it bread? haha!) Americans will snarf down a hamburger or a chicken nugget but make gagging sounds over other animals.  Have you ever looked into a big old cow's brown eyes?  They're stinking adorable.  Chickens are snuggly little fuzzy cuties.  If you can eat that you have no business getting all appalled at munching on some lamb chops.  But that's not my point.  Where was I?  I have no idea.  Right.  


Meat.  


After living the last year in a group home where we ate only meat people gave us or the food bank sold us I have been more diligent than ever to get that @#$#%^ out of our system now.  We were eating frozen chicken that didn't come with labels.  Just huge unmarked fowls from some nameless factory.  Rolls of ground beef (or horse, who the heck knew).  Anyway, it gave me the creeps to eat it but eat it we did.  You put enough Rooster sauce on something and it's gonna be tasty.


Now that we're back to being able to shop the way I want, I still haven't made that leap to buying organic meat.  It's so unbelievably expensive!  No, wait.  It's not.  It's just that compared to the mass produced nastiness you can buy for a couple greenbacks a pound, it's expensive.  But have we really sunk so low, folks, that we would buy steak at the Dollar Tree?  


I'm not kidding.  They had it last week.


After learning that our chicken we buy is soaked in chlorine to get the bacteria to die and the beef is treated with ammonia for the same reason, I'm not sure I want to eat it again.  There's so much feces in our meat that I'd like to quit thinking about it now.  I mean, I'm a mom; I've dealt with poop on epic levels.  But I draw the line at eating it.  You do know that you have to cook meat to certain temperatures not because it's dangerous to eat the meat itself under cooked, but because you need to kill off all that lovely poop so you can eat it and not get sick.


I knew about soybeans and corn and GMOs.  I knew about organic dairy and I've been buying that for years.  I knew about free range chickens and I much prefer handing over my wrinkly dollars bills to a neighbor down the road for eggs.  But I've buried my head in the sand, so to speak, about the meat.


Now I'm not really talking about going vegetarian.  I love a medium rare steak.  I love chicken.  A meal without meat feels incomplete.  But I certainly can't afford to feed it to my family of five seven days a week.


So what Mike and I are proposing to the girls is to be meat free four days a week.  And on the three where we can have it, it'll be the good stuff.  This will be harder for them at lunch because I'm going to stop buying nuggets and fish sticks, which is their lunchtime staple food.  What about lunch meat?  I'm gonna assume that mechanically separated animal parts smooshed back together probably isn't super natural.  Who knows how many different turkeys are smashed into one paper thin slice?  We can't have peanut butter remember, due to G's allergies.  No one cares for the almond stuff.  There may be a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches in the Williams' future.  Ideas, please?


Is it really so bad?  Well, you could ask the workers who work at these plants (only 13 in the nation and they control the whole industry.  Fifty years ago there were thousands.  Isn't that weird?  How powerful are they?) but most are illegal and aren't going to talk to you. 


Sometimes I think that a hundred years from now, scientists are really going to shake their goatee-d heads and mutter about our stupidity.  Why are we questioning the onslaught of cancers and autism and ADD and diabetes and all of these maladies that are so on the rise, it's disgusting?  I can picture them saying as they nibble on a real tomato and not the kind that's been unnaturally ripened with methane gasses, "can't believe our ancestors couldn't figure out they were killing themselves...raising money for cures while they consumed huge quantities of pesticides, bleaches, GMOs, antibiotics...what a bunch of morons..."


Am I overreacting?  What do you think?  Does Tyson deserve our respect as long as their chickens are pumped full of so much food their legs can't support them and they've never seen daylight?  I have a soft spot for chickies...my sister had a brood as a kid and they all had names.  She also had a chicken hat that she wore in public just to humiliate me but that's another story for another day.


So what do you think?  Should Mike take up hunting?  Is organic milk not enough, should we go to raw?  Can we do this pseudo vegetarianism?  Will I lose weight?  Will I become an annoying person who refuses to eat at other people's houses and has weird restrictions that really make everyone want to smack me?  Will I have to wear patterned tights and put my four year old in a sling and only shop at fair trade markets?  Will I have to brew my own beer and go to story time and march in protests?  Will I start looking at clothing tags next?  I don't look good in patterned tights and Birkenstocks...  Will I start hanging out with the recyclers?  Cuz I stink at recycling and I think they'll vote me off the island eventually.  I have zero desire to own an electric car.  Can a liberal eater still vote Republican?   


Who's with me?


Criminy, I really want a flippin' hamburger now.   Get it?  Flippin' burgers??  HAHAHA!

Pillow talk with a three year old

The past two nights, Gianni has had trouble sleeping. Since I've had trouble sleeping for three months now, and I feel terrible about The Bee Episode of three days ago, I let him snuggle me.  Hence the ridiculous conversation we whispered at the wee hours of the morning.

G:  Hey, Mom?
M: ZZzz.
G:  Hey, Mom, do you know? The sun is up!
M:  That's the moon.
G:  Oh.  Hey, Mom, do you know?
M: Whaa?
G:  You have stinky nose breath.
M:  Then roll over.
G:  Hey, Mom, can we get up yet?
M:  YOU can.
G:  Hey, Mom, do you know? Do you know that blackberries are like squishy potatoes?
M:  Huh?
G:  Yeah!  Yeah, they're like if you left your blackberry in the street and a car came and ran over it.  Yeah!
M:  Whatever, Grover.
G:  Hey, Mom, you ever left your blackberry in the street?
M:  Sure.
G:  And hey, Mom?
M:  Grr.
G:  My legs won't stay still.
M: I noticed.
G: Hey, Mom? Hey, Mom?  HEY,MOM?
M: WHAT?
G:  Is that still the moon up?
M:  YES.  Go to sleep. Do you need to go potty?
G:  No.
M: Cause you're really wiggly and if you don't stop elbowing me I'm gonna kick you out.
G:  K.  K, sorry, Mom.  Hey, Mom?
M:  What?
G:  Can you move over so I can get out and go potty?
*Four minutes later*
G:  Hey, Mom.  Hey, Mom, did you know?
M:  Zzz.
G: I love you, Mom. But don't breathe anymore on me, k?

Risking Life and Limb

I've had two near death experiences this week and I think that's plenty.

Okay, the first one didn't happen to me per se, but it happened to my Pooky Head, and since I gave birth to Pooky Head and he is in fact, the fruit of my looms, it's almost like it happened to me.

Plus, I'll remember it and he won't.

The story:

And by the way, if you're on Facebook a lot you've already heard both, so don't feel obligated to read this.  It's not like I'll know if you leave here and play Mind Sweeper instead.  This applies to people who SAY they aren't on Facebook but actually ARE on Facebook because they know my password and like to lurk and make fun of my friends.  I'm not petty enough to name names but it rhymes with Smichael K. Smilliams.

But back to The Story:

Packed a lovely picnic lunch for myself and the kiddos and hit the park.  Said park has a wonderful wooden castle structure.  Had barely set down the food when a friendly gramma type hollered over the swings to me,
'Hey, tell your kids to watch out, there're alot of bees out today!'

You guessed.  I haven't even opened my mouth when I hear Gianni shrieking and Cora shouting,
'Run, Gianni!  RUN!'

He was SWARMED.

The flashbacks I was getting of poor little Macauley Culkin in My Girl were not helping me.
No one has heard or seen anything of Macauley in years.
I think the bees really did kill him.

The bees were under his shirt and in his underwear.


It was awful.  He had about 20 welts by the time I wrestled him down and stripped him.  I cuddled my little nekked guy for as long as I could and then we hightailed it to Walgreens where I force fed him Benedryl. 

He kept crying out "I don't wanna play hide and seek!" and "I wanna go to a DIFFERENT park next time!" in between sobs.

Cool as the castle park is, I doubt we'll ever go back...

Anyway, it's nutty that as allergic as Gianni-Be-Good is to things, bee stings aren't one of them.  He's fine now.  'Cept for the nightmare last night that the bees were back and in his bed.
Sniffle!
I let him sleep with me.  I'm heartless at 4 a.m. but no one is that heartless.

Story #2 simply involves me following up on a dresser for sale on craigslist.

Dresser man and I were texting.  He couldn't get a photo to come through on my phone.  Evidently my phone is programmed to receive photos of my nephew Buck and Buck only.  Anyhoo, me being the genius that I am, I hop in my car without telling a soul where I am going or that I am even craigslist shopping or anything. 

The house, when I find it, is ... in need of some TLC.

Craigslist would call it a "handy man's dream!" or "a real fixer upper opportunity!"

I debated not stopping.

But the idea of the world's best dresser pulls me in like Mafia ties.  I have to risk it!

Odd man meets me in looooooong drive way.  Informs me that the dresser is out yonder.  Past the cars and trucks and by the barn.

Greattttttt.

Let me just speed dial 911 inconspicuously here while searching in my purse for the pepper spray I do not own.

Needless to say, as I am here and blogging, Odd Fellow didn't chop me up and bury me under the floorboards in his barn.  Or stuff me in the dresser.

And most importantly,

THE DRESSER WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Gianni

Today we spent the morning at the Allergy and Asthma Clinic of Wyoming, getting Luigi re-tested for all that plagues him. I was hoping and crossing my fingers that he would have grown out of some of his food allergies, but it was not meant to be. Sadness. It looks like he will be celebrating his second birthday with yet another dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free (actually, as we all know, peanuts are a legume, so make that legume-free) concoction. We also tested him for goat's milk, hoping that would give him some yummy stinky cheese options, but it was a big no for that one as well. Mariah breathes a sigh of relief. Also slight allergies to corn and tomatoes, which is new, but not strong enough to steer completely clear of them. Have any of you ever been scratch tested? Lorna, I know you have sympathy here. He does really very well, and the scratching itself doesn't bother him much, but the hard part is not touching the area that is shot full of the offending ingredients until the timer goes off and the nurse comes back. We had to do the peanut one three times because he somehow kept rubbing it off (one time was a bit like Baloo the Bear rubbing his back up and down on a tree). I should have brought my camera so you could see his back: pen marks, poke marks, and then the enormous red reactions that swell. He zoomed around the office, which is conveniently shaped in a big circle, shirtless, charming waiting patients and staff, with me trying to catch up, for a large part of the two hours. Keeping a toddler entertained in a doctor's office is an exercise in creativity. How many verses of Wheels on the Bus are there? Find shapes. Find colors. Find the bathroom. Remove the cotton balls and Qtips from up his nose where he was stashing them like the end of the world was upon us and well, you're gonna need all the cotton balls and Qtips you can get. Read out loud from super outdated issues of Redbook magazine. Weigh yourself 15 times. Crinkle up all the sanitary paper on the examination table. Play your sister's DS until you stick the pen up in the same place the cotton balls and Qtips had formally been, and then you aren't allowed to play it anymore. But all in all, he was good. He didn't cry at all, although he did get annoyed, and he was happy to give everyone "sugar" when he left. Our allergist is great: he's Indian and has a heavy accent so sometimes I can't tell when he's telling me to "do" something, or NOT to "do" something. At the end of the appointment he asked how badly he confused me, but I assured him we were understanding each other quite well. I think. So now we stay the course, avoiding dairy, eggs, potatoes, and peanuts, just like before. We ate at McDonalds as a reward (for the under 30 crowd obviously) and spent half the time slapping french fries out of his chubby little paws. My next step is to get him a medical ID bracelet...because that's what paranoid moms do... And seriously, you can tell someone about his allergies 50 times before they pay attention enough to rethink the nacho cheese potato chip they were about to hand him the half second my back was turned. If anyone has theories about how food allergies come into being, no one in the medical/health industry knows, so I'm sure they'd appreciate your ideas. Some of them are:

A too sterile environment. Well, I am a rather clean person with plenty of pet peeves like keep your dishes out of my sparkly sink, people, that's what dishwashers are for, and I used to be infamous for vacuuming everyday back when I had carpet, and I think you can safely assume that my entire family bathes practically on a daily basis (hey, I said practically!), and maybe I don't wash my sheets quite as often as Martha Stewart recommends. But I'm not going to end up on a talk show panel with OCD tendencies, so I think that theory's bunk. I don't use anti-bacterial soaps either. And if you've spent time with me and my babies outside, I have no problem letting them eat a little dirt. Or straw. Or gravel. We're building up their immune systems! There's a leather strap on the high chair at my house that is as old as me (I used it as a baby), and every baby just feels the need to suck on that strap at some point in toddlerdom. It has got to be full of some real good and tasty germs by now. We call it the immunization strap. Well, I think it's funny at any rate. Bring your own chair then if you're grossed out.

Eating lots of crap when you're prego, thereby passing on allergies to the baby. I did eat a lot of Frosted Flakes now that I think about it... but only in between the tossed salads and homemade soups and lean meats. And I hardly eat any dairy myself other than cheese. I didn't go overboard with peanut butter although I probably ate a couple PBnJs during that nine months. There goes theory #2.

Introducing solid foods too early. We all know how long I nurse my kids and by the time I do introduce solid foods, we have passed the baby foods stage and gone straight to the good stuff. No go with theory #3.

Vaccines. Ha ha! If you've know me longer than 15 minutes you know where I stand on those (far, far away). Farewell theory #4.

A family history. Well, I didn't think this one applied to me and my little ones, but after telling the doc about my seasonal allergies, Mike's shrimp allergy, Cora's cat allergies, he held up his hand said, "that's a family history!" Or maybe he said, "that's NOT a family history," I'm not sure. So perhaps theory #5 doesn't bite the dust, and maybe that's the one that got him. Kind of like inheriting my height or Daddy's booming voice, the poor guy got all our messed up histamines as well.

So, armed with Epi-Pen Jrs in every bag, we march on through life, resigned to never making omelette's or hash browns for breakfast (unless he's happily occupied with oatmeal with rice milk), a name tag for the church nursery that reads "Gianni - DO NOT FEED," and the slightly odd information that LifeSavers Gummies are made with potato starch. Oh, and so is egg substitute. Nice. And we've had to limit our vodka intake. That was a joke. Vodka's made from potatoes, get it?

But in all seriousness, he doesn't seem to be one of those poor kids who go into antiphylactic shock when their cousin's aunt's dog's second wife went down the peanut butter aisle at the super market and then gave them a kiss, so really, we aren't complaining. We've never had to use the Epi yet and hopefully never will. And who knows, he may just grown out of them yet, and then all he'll have to overcome in order to become normal is that pesky fainting habit and the unsocialization that comes from being freaky/weird homeschoolers.

I should have called it 3 Kid Misadventures

-yet another fort- -i don't like this photo; he hardly looks like

a baby!-

So we recall, don't we, the day Gianni split open his noggin and got cheery blue stitches? One month later (to the day mind you) he decides to spend some quality time in the hospital. I'm going to give you the reader's digest condensed version, because, let's face it, this blog has a reputation for being amusing and silly, and well, this story isn't funny. And it won't be in 20 years either. But for those of you who haven't heard the story, here goes:

We all have The Crud, The Cold, The Plague, whatever you want to call it, all last week. Coughs and runny noses and low grade fevers, etc. Not really too terrifying, and those of you who know me at all know I am not one of those people who rush to the doctor every time someone in my house sneezes. In fact I usually wait, stubbornly refusing to admit to being sick, until I finally give in and go and have to perform interpretive dances or charades to explain my ailments due to having no voice, and as a result learn I have numerous ailments that I could have avoided had I paid enough attention to the symptoms earlier. I digress. Follow the bunny trail. Anyway, I decide to take Moose to see his doctor because he was really sleepy and lethargic even though his symptoms weren't nerve wracking. Sure enough, when we get there the doc says he won't need any prescriptions, we'd just use a nebulizer to help loosen up his chest/lungs. Sounds like a good idea. Note to you: not if you have a severe peanut allergy. So the ingredients in the air that we are purposely blowing down his throat are plummeting his oxygen. We can't figure out this reason until much later. Taken by ambulance to the hospital later. Anyway, this was supposed to be short, so to sum up: he's fine now. We stayed the night (always a treat...yum, hospital food ) and got to leave the next evening. I meant to take a photo of the banana I ordered for the poor hungry baby who got a great breakfast of cheesey egg products with hashbrowns and a side of milk (I guess they were just trying to finish the little guy off and thus never let us leave).* The same man who burst open the door at a bright and early 6:55 am after we had just fallen asleep a half hour before, yelling "Health and Nutrition!" is kind enough to bring a half of a brown banana, wrapped in saran wrap on a wilted lettuce leaf with a $3.20 pricetag. The photo was to make you chuckle and make me cry tears of the financially unstable, but I didn't have the camera. I'm just so thrilled to find out what the little Master of Disaster has in store for me in April.

Here's something funny: yesterday I wore flipflops and a skirt and a short sleeved shirt to the park where we played in the sun all afternoon, and today we have blizzard watches and it's snowing and it's blowing so hard you can't keep your eyelids open and all the highways outta here are shut down. Funny to you actually, no one here is bursting out with spontaneous giggle fits. Where is spring?! If it doesn't get here how in the world will I have time to properly kill all the stuff I plant in my garden? That kind of black thumb activity takes some time to plan, people, don't underestimate the dedication of the horticulture-challenged.

Oh, and if any of you are keeping a tally from the past decade of Who's Hit The Garage While Parking, here are the updated scores:

Mike:2

Lyssa:2

It's really too close to call at this point in the game/marriage.

I know this is getting really long, and if you've made it to the end, bless you. One more thing before I go this week:

I should have my parenting license revoked when it comes to birthdays. This occured to me when Anna's latest fish expired the other day (this is #6 since her birthday in January). Happy birthday, Roosky, let's learn about death and the circle of life instead of receiving a Barbie like a normal little girl. Poor kid. Let's revisit, for the sake of my humility, some other birthday mistakes I've made. There was the homemade cake that I left too close to the edge of the table and the dogs licked off all the pink, made from scratch frosting, and the candy monkeys. We ate it anyway because I was too cheap to go replace it with a storebought one (see below post). There was the year I canceled Cora's birthday camping trip that we had planned with all her buddies because it was over 100 degrees and I was pregnant. This would have been alright since our Plan B was to take her to the drive-in theater that night. But it sold out and we waited in line in our car for over an hour, and most of her pals got there before us and got in but she didn't. Happy birthday, Cora. Maybe next year I can run over her dog or burn down their dollhouse or something since I'm on such a roll. Big sigh. Anyway, those of you with fish knowhow, please share your wisdom as Anna has gone from tears and sobs (death of Swimmy) to a few sniffles (deaths of Ghosty, Blaze, and Tiger) to a brief farewell (catfish I don't recall name of now) to a cheery flush down the toilet with a "all drains lead to the ocean, dude!" (Marina). Me thinks her grasp of death may be too mature for a seven year old at this point.

* G. is allergic to all forms of dairy, especially egg, and also potatoes. He's a Denny's waitress' nightmare.