The Scene in My Front Yard

I took this picture five minutes ago. That car down there on the right belongs to one of the artists doing some work for Matt. It has been raining here, steadily, since last night. The dude tried to back out of our driveway, which curves, but he went straight, completely left the pavement, and then couldn't get any traction on the wet grass, which then became mud. I bet that part of the yard is going to look awesome in the morning. If the HOA didn't like the imperceptible bare spot on the other side of our driveway, they are really going to want to see this.

What you can't tell from the picture is that, happily, he didn't run into the power box concealed in that pampas grass, and he didn't run over our neighbor Mindy's flower bed. You do not want to mess with that woman's roses. So it could have been worse. I came outside when both Matt and his friend were standing there, soaking wet, trying to shove boards under the front tires. I couldn't believe that the car was completely off the driveway. "Crappity crap crap CRAP!" I thought. But what I said was, "Oh well, why don't y'all go get us some Wendy's?" Because I am well-bred like that, people.

Then I looked up the Weight Watchers point value of an order of Wendy's fries. But that is a whole 'nother story.

Another rain vignette from my day: Hank likes to "help" me roll the giant trashcan out to the street, which is tricky in perfect weather conditions, and not at all a fun time in the rain. So he had his raincoat and Croc Mammoths on, and I had my raincoat and Uggs, so we went to the side of the house to get the trash can. I tried to pick up a cardboard box that had somehow fallen onto the ground, to throw it into the can, but of course the cardboard was wet, AND the box had been filled with trash, so the box fell apart and I had to spend a few minutes picking Kleenex and candy wrappers out of the mud at the base of the trashcan. While I was doing this with my free hand, the umbrella I was holding in my other hand got entangled in the holly tree beside the house. I had to tug it loose, which meant shaking the wet holly branches all over myself, a lot. Hank said, "Mama, why are you DOING that?" Yes, why?

Then he scampered off and stood in the gutter, letting the water run into his shoes. Which again, were not ordinary rubber Crocs, but the Crocs with the wooly lining. You might be surprised at how much water those linings hold. To paraphrase Anchorman, I mean, I wasn't even mad, because it was amazing.

Girls on the Lam

She did it! Laura made it to the finish line at her Girls on the Run 5K on Sunday. (Matt and I call it "Girls on the Lam," because it sounds so badass yet madcap.) She says she ran most of the way and "barely walked at all," so I think that's pretty cool. She had fun, and still had enough energy to do my "30 Day Shred" workout with me. Youth.

Matt took these pictures of the action.







That's her running back into the stadium for the final leg. And here's the finish line in sight. I don't know if I could have covered that distance in 36 minutes.





I love that picture for the contrast between the intense look on her face and the frilly hair accessories.



For this picture, I said, "Show me how you crossed the finish line!" So, though it is not a huge distance, we are mighty proud. And Hank also represented the family quite well at The Wiggles show, standing up and shaking his booty--he actually said, "I'm going to shake my booty, Mom"--for the entertainment of our entire row. That was a fun concert, and my, those Wiggles do it up right. My favorite part was when they all got in Western gear, complete with their color-coordinated spangly cowboy outfits, and sang and danced to "Old Dan Tucker." Well hello fabulous!

November Is The New October

Or that's what it feels like. It was so warm and beautiful Saturday. The kids were wading and running around at nearly five in the afternoon. Matt's mom and brother Andy are here visiting us, and we went down to the Chattahoochee River. Andy took these pictures. Hank brought along that plastic sword, but he didn't actually brandish it at the geese. It was just there in case things got out of hand. Question for you ornithologists: The geese have been hanging around all over these parts for the last month or so. Are they migrating, or is this where they have migrated to?

While we were playing and hanging out, Matt was drilling Laura on her multiplication tables. When she got one wrong, she had to run a lap. Don't think this was, like, parental tyranny. She loved it. Kids today.



And she needs the practice, because today she's running in her first 5K race, the culmination of her Girls on the Run club. GOTR is a great activity, I think. Have you heard of this? As Laura describes it, "It's just something where a bunch of gals run." You know, "gals."

Matt will go to the race with her, because at that exact time, I'm taking Hank to see The Wiggles with a bunch of people from his school. Hank doesn't even watch The Wiggles, but he's very excited, even though Laura has convinced him that one of the Wiggles is dead. I keep telling her that Greg the yellow Wiggle just left to pursue other opportunities. But she is adamant. Anyway, wish us ALL luck!

Publix Has Hung Their Giant Wreaths, So I Guess Christ Is Born, Everybody

I know it's like a thing to be all like, "Wah! Stores stock holiday stuff earlier every year! Why can't we go back to the days when all we wanted for Christmas was a corncob doll and a shiny penny?" I know. Like we're all just pining for homespun authenticity and slow time, which we could have if it weren't for all this shopping! But somebody's gotta do it! And get your hands off that Spode Christmas ladle or I will end you.

So it's a thing. But seriously, I noticed today that my Publix has bedecked itself with huge evergreen wreaths, and hung tinsel candle things from all the lights in the parking lot. Inside there are more swags and furbelows over the display cases. What with Halloween stuff appearing as soon as back-to-school is out of the way, and then Christmas things right at the stroke of 12 on Halloween night, and then Valentine's Day is everywhere on January 1, which will cede shelf space to Easter on February 15, I'm starting to feel a little whipped from pillar to post. Like we're on a forced march. I know we don't have to buy what they're selling, but there is a way that seeing all that stuff in every store seeps into your consciousness and makes you think you're insufficiently festive if you're not feeling their calendar. Their tail is wagging my dog..

I would just like to stand up for November, and for Thanksgiving, which seems to have no presence in our mass retail culture, which I fear will cause it to lose ground in our shared emotional culture. Thanksgiving has always been destined to lose to Halloween and Christmas, because it's not really monetizable. People don't buy things for Thanksgiving, except food and maybe plane tickets. It also sells magazines, I guess. (Sidebar: the other night Matt said, "The dog vomited at the top of the stairs. It was bad. I had to use the Martha Stewart Living to clean it up. I thought that was funny." I said, "But I hadn't read that one yet!" And he said, "I think you could still go fish it out of the trash." Hmmph. So now I'll never know what all Martha is going to do with pomegranate seeds this month.) So it's not that I want stores to come up with a whole bunch of Turkey merchandise to sell us. I would just like for them to wait a mo' with the outdoor decorations. I want to take a breath and enjoy November for what it is.

Publix redeemed itself for me tonight, because I ran in there to get Matt some popcorn, and there were coupons hanging on some of the bottles of Perrier. Now, last year, in the summer of '08, those of us who were hard core couponnieres had a nice little Perrier racket going. Publix had $1 off Perrier coupons on the shelves, which you could take across the street to CVS, where if you bought two bottles of Perrier (for a dollar each) you got $1 in CVS Extracare Bucks. You could lather, rinse, and repeat that deal as much as you wanted, if I recall. I do remember that I practically bathed in the stuff and I loved it. So right now, the big bottles of Perrier, which are $1.59 at my store, have 55 cent coupons hanging on the necks. It's only the pink grapefruit variety. A dollar for the big bottle seemed reasonable to me, so I struck hard. Check your Publix if you're needing a classier chug-a-lug. And Joyeux Noël!

Still Shredding

So I'm still doing that thing with the video and the exercising.  Yesterday's workout made one full week of the 30 Day Shred, seven consecutive nights.  Even when I've exercised regularly in the past, I've never done it every single day.  I think the relentlessness of it might actually help me stick with the program. There's no thinking, "Oh, today is an off day," or "Do I feel up for spinning tomorrow?"  It just happens daily, rain or shine.  And at a certain point, you don't want to break the streak, you know?  I still haven't managed to do it any earlier than ten at night, but that's working okay.  

My method is to line up a reward for myself first.  I march into Matt's office (I do a whole lot of self-righteous marching before and after shredding I find) and say something like, "Okay, I'm going to shred and then we're going to do X." Whatever X is, like play Rock Band or have cosmos or make balloon animals. Something.  And the workout is so dang short. I mean, by the time you really want it to be over, it is.

So, at day 7, my results are: Mostly stuff only I can perceive.  My upper body is stronger.  When I reach down and pick up Hank, it's like he zooms up to sit on my hip.  And I don't make that attractive grunting sound while lifting him. My arms and shoulders feel firmer.  My leg muscles are definitely firmer, but if you've done any kind of exercise, you know that happens super fast. My caboose muscles are a little sore today, but that's new--I think I started going deeper into the squats last night.  Is this just so, SO much more than you wanted to know?  Also, my tummy is tighter, though I would not try to bounce a quarter off of it.  Only I can tell that,  I think.  I'm hoping some visible results are down the road.

I started counting Weight Watchers points again on Monday, and that's been fine.  I am mostly able to resist eating Halloween candy.  Except Laura had a dentist appointment on Tuesday afternoon that turned into her having two teeth extracted, and when we got home she was so miserable at how numb her face felt that I ate three mini snickers.  I don't know exactly how her discomfort led to my eating candy, but that was the chain of events as I reconstructed them.  I did tally up the points, of course.  Laura is totally fine now, but those snickers may be a part of me forever.  It's a delicate balance, this life. 

Where's the Love?

Hank's preschool, which is run by a church, like all the good preschools around here, is right across the street from another church preschool. That one is the Big Red Church, while Hank goes to school at the Medium White Church. Hmm, "white church," I suppose it truly is. Oh ho ho. Anyway. Both preschools start at 9:30 in the morning, which means that the little road they both face must accommodate the simultaneous arrival of children for both schools: minivans bearing 500 kids turning off the big highway and getting into the car drop off lines. At Big Red Church, the one year-olds are dropped off on one side of the building, and the bigger kids are on the other side. At White Church, there's just one drop off line, but it's a one-way only loop. People are pouring onto the little road from the big highway, with some people U-turning to bring their one year-olds to the proper entrance of Big Red, and some people (poor souls) turning left into oncoming traffic to get into White Church's drop off line. Whatever, I only want you to understand that situation is best described as a total pigfuck. As we say in the South.

This morning, I had dropped Hank off and continued around the church to the exit, where I was waiting to turn left onto the little road that would take me back to the big highway. I was waiting patiently for an opening, as some people were still whizzing by to drop their kids off. Well, a woman in a gold Mercedes behind me was apparently upset that I was there waiting to turn left, as it prevented her from turning right onto the little road. Which she easily could have done if I hadn't been there, getting all in her way and ruining her morning. You see, in our universe, two objects cannot occupy the same place at precisely the same moment. And yet, there I was, at the front of the line, and she was behind me. So you see her problem. It has to do with physics.

I was admiring a flock of Canada geese that seem to be hanging around Medium White Church lately. They were all over the church lawn, bobbing and waddling. I was thinking, "Goose poop alert." Suddenly I heard a honking and a revving of an engine. Gold Mercedes zoomed around from behind me, flattening one of the little orange cones that the church puts up to keep people from turning in at the exit. As she cut narrowly in front of me, this lady gave me a really nasty look. I raised my hands in an exaggerated shrug, like a "WTH?" motion. And she stretched her right arm out towards me, perhaps to offer me a helpful hand gesture. But what happened is that she threw her cell phone against her passenger window. I could see it smack the glass as she careened away. I don't really know what was happening there. But how I wish her passenger window had been down.

This is one of my fellow parents at this Christian preschool. Sure lady, we don't know each other, but we are not all anonymous monads in our little bubbles. Maybe I'm not being fair. Maybe she had just spilled a beaker of acid in her lap. Or remembered that she hadn't set her tivo to record Regis and Kelly. But, could we all just relax a scoosh? And love on each other? As we say in the South.

Anyway, I gotta go brave the traffic to pick up his majesty. Goose poop alert! Have a good day and I hope y'all are feeling the love.

Good Lord at the Candy

It's become commonplace to say that your kid got too much candy at Halloween. I mean, it doesn't take much to be "too much." But this year I just have to say, "Damn." Laura brought in the kind of haul that is only obtainable if there's a golf cart involved. Normal Neighbor's husband is a golf pro, and they have some kind of super sized golf cart. After we did a circuit of our nearby street on foot, which was all Hank was really up for given the rain, steep driveways, and his short legs ("That's my last house," he announced towards the end), these three girls got chauffeured around by Mr. Normal.

Laura didn't get dropped back at home until 9. So that was my child ringing your doorbell at 8:45, after you thought, "Surely it's safe to turn off the porchlight." Laura admitted, "I think some people were surprised to see us." Mr. Normal is not one to cut a party short, I guess. So she got 200 pieces of candy. I know this because she got up at 5:45 on Sunday morning to inventory it. According to my dad, who was trying to snooze on the couch (whole nother story) she counted it aloud, piece by piece, before the sun was up.

And this is the good stuff, too. No gummy hotdogs or any of that crap in this bunch of loot. Matt and I got one look at it and were congratulating ourselves on living in such a nice neighborhood. And no Halloween would be complete without the semi-creepy guy in the other cul-de-sac who gave out full-sized candy bars. Actually, he gave Laura two full-sized candy bars.

So the question is, do you have some kind of clever system for managing the candy consumption, or do you just let it rip? Matt and I kind of fly by the seat of our pants. All the candy is up on top of the fridge, but when the kids have asked for a piece, I've let them pick one. This will likely continue for a few days, until I get sick of having the stuff around. One school of thought is to let them eat a lot the first couple of days, and then it starts to lose its lustre, then one night the unloved remnant-candy goes in the trash. What are y'all doing?

When I was at the pediatrician with Hank on Friday, the doctor said, "Tell him the Sugar Fairy needs the candy to build her candy castle!" I said, "Oh, is that the story you use?" She said, "No, I just throw it away." So today, my cleaner Fabienne came (on Monday instead of Tuesday), and I was ruminating on the massive stash of candy. I said, "I guess I could just throw it away after a week or so." She gave me a look of disbelief. Then, in her Hungarian accent, she screeched, "Throw eet away???" I said, "Well, what are you going to do?" She said, exasperated, "Keep it in a beeg jaaahr and EAT IT! For as LONG as it takes!"

So are you going to put your candy in a beeg jaaahr, dahlink?

Canada in a Thong

My mother-in-law left a pile of New Yorkers on a side table at my house, and I picked one up and flipped through it, because I couldn't reach my Us Weekly from the La-Z-Boy.  In the August 24 issue, David Sedaris has a piece called "Laugh, Kookaburra."  Like a lot of his writing, it starts out hilarious and then goes somewhere kind of dark. But before it goes there, he describes a trip he took to Australia:

Spend that much time on a plane and you're entitled to a whole new world when you step off at the other end--the planet Mercury, say, or, at the very least, Mexico City.  For an American, though, Australia seems pretty familiar: same wide streets, same office towers.  It's Canada in a thong, or that's the initial impression.

That made me laugh.  And then this morning I click over to my little sister's blog, and they are swimming.  Swimming for pleasure, because it is almost summer in their crazy antipodeal world. Amy, you were wearing a thong, right?

What I wanted to say is that Amy is doing NaBloPoMo, that thing in November where you post every day.  Hurray!  I did it last year, and it is great for growing a blog.  (I have some slight discomfort with using "grow" as a transitive verb like that, but that's what it does, it grows yer blog.)  Y'all please go show her some love from time to time.  As much as I want to crush her in our unannounced competition over who has more blog readers, I know she would like some support as she commits to blogging every damn day this month.  Good thing Thanksgiving isn't a big deal in Oz, Amy, 'cause it was kinda hard blogging through the holiday last year. I know, first world problem.  

You go, Amy!  Is anybody else doing this?  If so, be sure to comment and I'll add you to the blogroll, if you're not already there, so we can pop in and recognize.