cora's swim meet (she's the one in front)

Just getting her ready for the 2016 olympics! We've heard Chicago has put in their bid, along with Madrid, Rio, Tokyo, but we're hoping for home turf.

When good Waltons go bad

Look up the word idealistic in the dictionary and you'll find my beaming face. Well, not beaming exactly, most snapshots of moi look like I'm a deer in the headlights (you should get a load of my new driver's license but unless you work at the liquor store, you won't be). This new one on my profile of me and Moose was taken this weekend and it's the best shot I've me I've seen in ages. Maybe since babyhood or so, when it was ok to have a double chin and funny looking hair. But anyway, I was saying that I am idealistic. Are you? Do you have a running movie in your head that looks like a love child between Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons? I know I do. Only my movie family/life has a bit more money and better hair, at least on the men. Now that my dear hubby has a little something you've all been experiencing for years that we like to call weekends, I have pressed my idealistic images to the max. There will be picnics. There will be camping. There will be movie nights and pizza and sleeping in and bike rides. Oh yes. Even if it kills me these things will happen. It may in fact, kill me. Here's a recap of the last two weekends:

Me, talking to Mike: Let's pack a picnic and spend the day at the park! The kids can splash in the water and play in the playground and we can stroll romantically on rose petaled paths!

Mike, looking well, a bit deer in the headlights himself actually, says something unintelligible which I take to mean he's totally down with the plan.

So I lovingly make a cooler full of sandwiches. Individualized sandwiches. Honey mustard and lettuce for Cora. Pickles for Anna. Cheese and yellow mustard for me. Spicy mustard for Mike. Plain for Moose. There are apples and ice water. Sunscreen. A camera to capture our outing of family bliss. I can tell Mike is forfeiting his own personal weekend dreams of endless world domination playing Civilization, but the man is not dumb and a decade of marriage has not been wasted on him.

Enter the girls. You know the ones. They're supposed to look like Mary and Laura? These ones look more like Itchy and Scratchy, or maybe Pinky and The Brain. I don't really remember Mary and Laura fighting this much and we can't seem to get out the door without yelling, whining, pushing, shoving, and other very un-Walton like shennanigans. I'm getting a little annoyed that the movie in my head is becoming more and more like an episode of Supernanny (the beginning half hour, not the last). So I decide calmly to do something I've been threatening to do for over 8 years now: I walk over to them and take their round little noggins in my hands and then I smack their heads together. It sounded like banging two watermelons together, which is ironic and fitting, because lately they've had the IQs of fruit salad. The eldest stands in shock with her mouth hanging open like a codfish, and the middler runs away sobbing. But not surprisingly, they are angels all the way to the park. Point 1 for child abuse.

The park is cold. The water is cold. There was no need really for sunscreen as that particular orb in the sky has not appeared. There was need for a change of clothes for Gianni, who fell in the lake almost before the van had come to a complete stop, but I didn't pack one. There is a pack of preteens who curse like drunken sailors or worse, ballerinas, and it's tiring trying to talk over them so that your own children don't pick up on the words they're saying. Or worse, say, 'Mommy, isn't that what you said right before you smacked our heads together?'

The romantic stroll along the lake pathway doesn't happen because I am no longer talking to my husband because he made fun of me for making six different kinds of sandwiches and said his own mom used to do that and it drove everyone crazy than, too. I told him his mother should have drowned her ungrateful offspring at birth, and then I stalked off righteously.

Gianni falls in lake again and also eats what I think may have been a cigarette butt.

Weekend II:

This time it's Mike's idea to get in the car and have some family time. This is because we are seriously as broke as a joke due to supporting two houses and paying for Moose's little hospital adventure and the fact that, oh yeah, I am not a brain surgeon. But driving is free. So we go to a different park, this one a few miles outside of town, and the girls fight the whole way. I am short and thusly (thusly?) cannot quite reach them in the backseat otherwise Ma Ingalls would have konked them out cold with some nun chucks. We get to the park. It's beautiful. It's freakin' cold. The wind chill is close to -45. No, not really, but it's cold. However, Ma and Pa refuse to admit it this to their whiney offspring and are determined to have a good time no matter what. Cora won't get out of the car. Gianni almost blows away. His sandwich (made with all the same ingredients by the way) does blow away. Ma and Pa force a smile and hide our goosebumps under the cheery checked tablecloth. The one that blows away. After oh, about 4 minutes of this fun, we all load back up in the Adventuremobile. By now the girls have whined and fought so much that a little come to Jesus talk is in order and they end up being grounded for all of eternity.

The rest of the day turned out nice though. We went a little further and in the mountains where some of the wind can be blocked, it's not nearly so frigid. We climbed boulders and frolicked through meadows and it was actually as good as the movie in my head.

Also in the movie in my head, the baby doesn't stuff so much stuff (I say stuff because the actual substance is unknown) down the toilet that it majorly overflows and floods the bathroom. He also doesn't learn to climb into the kitchen sink and turn on the water. Or sit in the bathtub fully clothed, and turn on that water all over himself. Did I say he was going to be an electrican? I meant plumber. Also in my movie, the heroine doesn't get lost every time she gets on the freeway and end up halfway to Timbuktu before she turn around and it takes 40 minutes to get home instead of 10 and the baby fell asleep which is really really bad, because now he won't nap at home, and there goes the last couple hours of hope for Ma. But Ma is strong and invincible! Ma needs a nap. Ma decides instead in her idealistic little brain, or what's left of it, to make a big family dinner. Ma breaks favorite casserole dish. Ma went to bed at 9:00 last night.

Why is this the type of sight that greets me when I walk into a room?

The only peanuts Gianni can eat: the packing variety.

Me and Facebook

According to a quiz on Facebook (ahhh, Facebook, I love you, I hate you. Nothing brings me more worried filled nights than wondering why some friend I had ten years ago won't confirm my friendship. Really, I don't need that kind of anxiety. And yet, I persist on going back for more rejection. What's even worse is finding someone you are so totally excited to find and you make a moron of yourself, but when they do respond they are just really, really over you and aren't at all as thrilled as you just told them you were) I am a terribly mysterious person. I think that's funny. Either you people are more obtuse than I am, which is saying something, or I really am an enigma wrapped in a mystery shrouded in a conundrum. So, here are the answers my so-called best pals got wrong, plus a few more.

1. I am scared of bridges. My personal hell would be living in Astoria. I don't understand how or why they stay up the way they do. And they sometimes collapse. You can tell me they don't, but they do. It isn't that I'm afraid of heights, I'm not, but their structure makes no sense. Am I the only one to notice there isn't anything under them keeping them aloft?

2. I don't like cucumbers. Well, it isn't that I don't like them, perse, but they give me instant and severe nausea as soon as I take a bite. I find this weird indeed and if anyone can explain that to me, please do leave me a comment. But don't worry about me, if one is hidden under a Ranch laded crouton, I will be ok.

3. I wanted to be an archaeologist as a child. I only changed my mind when someone told me very few get to dig up mummies, most sit around in a library doing research all the time. Which really shouldn't have discouraged me because I would love to sit around in a library all day. So maybe I will be an archaeologist when I grow up after all.

4. I cook to relax. I love cooking and baking, especially if the kids are right outside the window playing outside where I can hear their chatter and something wonderful is playing in my under-the-counter cd player (lately the Los Lonely Boys). I love the ritual of it, the cookbooks, the smells, even the cleaning as I go which is a strange thing to love, but I do. Baking however is rather trying in Wyoming elevation: adjustments must be made and my cakes still fall flat. But my cinnamon oatmeal bread turned out yummy yesterday.

5. I hate sweet pickles. 'Nuff said. They're disgusting and not just because I can't eat cucumbers. I love the dill variety.

6. The nickname I dislike is Missy. Hated it ever since I was a kid. I think it may go back to my brother dating some chic named Missy and she was snotty. And they were always kissing around me, which was simply revolting. No little girl wants to see a close up of her brother's tongue; I need counseling just thinking about it. It's closely followed by "hey, aren't you Laryssa's Sister?"

7. My favorite musical is Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It's simply the best.

8. I started my homeschooling journey in second grade for this reason: we were learning how to alphabetize and I couldn't understand it. I was not accustomed to not understanding things and I was not appreciating the feeling this gave me. The girl who finished her page first got to help the others who were lagging behind. The girl who finished first was a twerp (Aerie, think redhead...oh yeah, you know who I mean) and when I humbled out and asked her for help she gave me a sly smile and walked away. Now since my mother had been telling me she would be happy to homeschool me if I was ever so inclined, I decided oh boy were they all going to be sorry when I never came back. And so I didn't ever go back. I can't promise you anyone was sorry though.

9. I don't how I could exist without books. I know, seems dramatic, but I am serious as a heart attack. I am a ferocious reader and libraries are my favorite places. I read more books by the time I was 13 than most people probably read in their whole lives. I love the characters and the plots and the suspense and the smell of books. I love the look of books, especially antique ones. I love wondering who else has read the words I am reading. I love the legacy the writers leave behind. I love the stories that stay with you forever and change the way you think of things and the way those characters have a tendency to show up in the middle of your day or night like a drunk caller, 'hey, remember me? I love you, man!' I love laughing out loud when I am the only one in the room or getting misty over something. I stopped reading one time in my life: after the girls were both born. For probably three years I didn't read. I read a lot of parenting books, but reading about some stranger's opinion on the care and rearing of the children you gave birth to is more trouble than it's worth. To this day if I see a copy of "Parenting" magazine or hear something that reminds me of Growing Kids God's Way, I want to hide under the couch with a chocolate bar until the bad memories are stuffed back where they belong. I watched a lot of television since that is easier to do when nursing youngsters and folding laundry. But I didn't read. When I picked up something after those years, I think it was the Mark of the Lion series, I devoured it like a starving woman and haven't stopped since. Now that I think about it, I had a lot of post partum depression symptoms after having Anna... coincidence? You make the call.

10. I am not a confident person. All my life people think I am, to the point of even being intimidated by me which I find laughable, but it's all a show I put on. I am sincerely blown away when I act like I am supremely confident and IT WORKS. It's only in the past decade that I feel like I'm not such a disapointment to myself and I can stop pretending to be someone that I'm not. I think it's just part of the growing up process, and if that's what comes with being in your 30s I am excited to be here. I don't like everything about myself and I have plenty of insecurites, like my weight and my hair and my clothes and speaking in a group and making small talk and my house and not having a career and everything else that I think everyone else is whispering about but no one really is, but at this point I can honestly say I give up the need to apologize for it. There are lots of things you can not like about me, but I think I'll be ok. Unless you never confirm me on Facebook, which will leave me a quivering mass of unanswered questions, curled up in the fetal posistion sucking my thumb and despairing all night.

cody, yellowstone, mt rushmore, devils tower

Aaaaah, family vacations! As much I complain about Wyoming, there are stunning parts and we got to see them all last week. I included the photo of an extremely sticky Gianni who has a difficult time getting snack foods from convenience stores and gifts shops, due to his allergies. So, being the dimwit I am, I bought him a huge butterscotch sucker. If you look closely you will see that his eyelashes are indeed stuck to his eyelid, where they were glued for the better part of a long car ride through Yellowstone National Park. You'd think, wouldn't you, that it would hurt not to be able to blink, but my only guess is that the sugar rush took away his ability to feel pain.

We rented a lovely house in Cody with my family, where we met everyone for Papa's big 6 - 0 birthday. For his birthday gift, he got to sleep with Anna, who enjoys practicing gymnastics routines in her sleep - happy birthday, Dad, sorry about the size 12 footprint bruises up and down your ribcage. My wonderfully organized mother brought along copious amounts of wine and a large gallon of saurkraut that we carted all over Wyoming. Our innards are pickled nicely now. We went to dinosaur museums (Wyoming is indeed a hotbed for fossils) and oohed and ahhed over Devil's Tower National Monument and realized in our humble opinions, that areas by Sheridan are actually more crazy beautiful than Yellowstone is. Gianni can officially sleep anywhere now: he loves the cribs at the Holiday Inns and is an expert at pushing elevator buttons. Mike made calls on doctors on the towns we went through, earning us hotels paid for by his job, which was a great perk.

And now, home again, spring has finally sprung here in Cheyenne. $13 and a unused garden spot in my yard became a sandbox, and combined with a subtle hint to the neighbors who own a trampoline and yet do not own children to jump on said trampoline, our yard is fully equipped for summer fun. Fun for them. I on the other hand, spend my time walking behind Gianni with a small broom and dustpan. And Mike says no more letting him play outside in nothing but his diaper and binky, killjoy. It's easier to shake him out when there aren't any clothes to hide sand and rocks and dirt in. It was me that said my kids should be dirty and disgusting at the end of the day, huh? I must have been tipsy on saurkraut at the time.

The middler donates to Locks of Love