finslippy

Momversation: Parental mishaps

Note that I opted against using the title "Mommy Mishaps." I still can't hear or see the word "Mommy" without cringing, unless it's said or written by my son. But that's me.

What is that face I'm making? Good lord, me, your face could freeze like that! And just did, on video, and now everyone's looking at it!

Anyhoo! This episode is about those times we, the highly fallible parents of the world, have accidentally injured our children, either by neglect, sleep deprivation, or stupidity. Go over there and confess to your own, parents of the world! You know you have some. (And yes, fathers, you get to have them as well.)

I provided one anecdote for this video, but I didn't mention the time I fell asleep with Henry on my chest and he slid off me and onto the floor (fortunately at my parents' house, where they have carpeting); or the time I tried to slow him down as he toddled down the sidewalk, and in doing so, actually caused him to fall forward and smash his tooth into his lip; or--but let's stop there. Parenting is fun!

Exciting blog-related changes are afoot, which you will all soon get to enjoy. And then I can get resume my regular schedule of writing about my feelings and hair.

Kelly and Olive, Part II

Right before Brownlandia was abandoned back in the spring, Kelly + Olive were kind enough to offer me professional tips on sprucing up the place. I do believe I promised you a look at their advice back in, oh, 1993. Or maybe it was July. It's so hard to tell anymore. What day is today? Why are those people shouting at me and pointing? Why am I running? Life is mysterious!

And so: their conclusions. I'm only going to highlight a few of their pages here, but I've put the rest on Flickr.

Here's the cover page. This is an assortment of images that I sent to them, so they could get a better sense of what I like. That exercise alone was quite helpful. The minute I read "vintage/eclectic," something clicked. I had never thought of my style that way, but that's precisely what I am. I mean, not ME, I AM NOT VINTAGE, but my style. I guess maybe I am vintage. And I'm certainly eclectic.

Let's look at that first sentence. "You gravitate toward punches of red and turquoise on more neutral backgrounds of white and brown." That sentence alone, my friends, set me on the right path. Once again, I had no idea that that was what I liked. I thought I just liked purty things! But everything they pulled here as examples of accessories made my heart sing. (Except the pouf is kinda hideous.) (I do like the idea of a pouf, but I do not like the idea of that one.) (Also, no one with a small child and two chronically shedding dark-haired pets--beasts who consider vomiting a leisure pursuit--is going to buy a white shag rug.)

Here, they advise putting the TV in the fireplace. A moot point, as our new apartment has no fireplace, plus we bought a flat screen tv to replace our trusty ol' hand-cranked televiewoscope. But also this tip didn't sit well with Scott. I might have been game, but if there's any hint of whimsy in our decor, Scott gets enraged. He might think I'm exaggerating, but he just got a look at this picture and OH GOD HE'S BREAKING THINGS AGAIN--

Shmoopy drapes! And they didn't even know the half of it. Like how each drape was lightly fringed with cat hair, from when Izzy rubbed her body against them as part of her scheme to drive me mad. We have shades in our new place and they make me so happy. I'm easily made happy, it seems.

This is fantastic. We have, my friends, far too many framed things. In our old place, we had under-bed storage boxes filled with framed prints and photos. We really wanted to do an arrangement like this, and the tutorial they linked to was invaluable. Once we got started, we just kind of eyeballed it, and it turned out great, if we do say so ourselves.

Even though we didn't use their advice for our old place, we sure as hell used it for the new one. Next: pictures of our new living room. I will try to get these up before 2012, because I hear tell that's the apocalypse.

Momversation video: sexy Halloween-ery

I never get gussied up for Halloween. The last time I made any effort to look Halloween-fancy, I was twelve, and my friend and I decided to enjoy one last trick-or-treat before we became Women and stopped such foolishness. We were both gypsies, because we were lazy. For most years I was a gypsy or a hobo, which meant that I either wore my mom's clothes or my dad's. That year I went for the former, and in addition to draping myself with my mom's finest costume jewelry, I liberally applied rouge and various goops and glitters to my face, in the Romany style. We knocked on a neighbor's door and a particularly unfriendly older woman I had never seen before opened it, glared at us, and announced, "You're just using Halloween as an excuse to put on makeup."

Oh, the shame! I ran home, scrubbed my face clean, and asked the Virgin Mary and all the saints to forgive me for parading about like a strumpet.

That last part is untrue. I did run home, horribly embarrassed at being found out (maybe everyone knows I want to look pretty! Sob!) but instead of wiping the filth off me I probably just watched Cheers and ate a bag of Reese's Mini Peanut Butter Cups while silently cursing the cranky old broad down the street.

Anyway, if you comment on this one you'll be in the running to win a Victoria's Secret Gift Card. And then you can wear sexy lingerie for Halloween and scandalize the neighborhood, or whatever.

Write blog post: check!

I am officially spread too thin. Like peanut butter that has been spread too, uh, thin. On a piece of toast, say. Nothing worse than thinly spreaded peanut butter. On the other hand you don’t want too much, or it gets stuck in your throat.

Now I’m hungry. Thanks, bad analogy.

This whole “my kid is back to school and therefore I have the whole day ahead of me” notion is bullshit. Bullshit! You heard it here first! Because it’s not the whole day. It’s six hours. Then you factor in getting to and from school, and blammo, you’ve lost an entire hour. So: five hours. Five hours during which, in addition to work, you’ve got to exercise (right?), answer emails, eat, and also carry out an unending list of small yet vital errands and tasks that somehow manage to eat up your entire day because say you have to print out a contract but the driver on your computer was deleted after you had to get the computer serviced so you download the new driver which of course means you have to restart and once you finally get it to work it turns out the printer is out of ink and the only place that carries your printer’s cartridges is the Staples which is easily a half-hour walk from your place and the employees at Staples hate to be rushed or to do their jobs at all so that’s going to eat up another half-hour, easy, so while you’re there you might as well pick up some school supplies and—oh, look, it’s pick-up time!

A couple of weeks ago I purchased a notepad, upon which, I resolved, I would write my to-do list for the day. It was a small, simple notepad. It might have cost a little over a dollar. It was not an enormous investment. Usually I have notebooks and pads all over the place, but at some point I cleaned and purged and removed every half-finished book of scribbles that was cluttering up my shelves. And then I had nothing to write on. I could write a to-do list on my computer, but then I'd be denied the pleasure of crossing off items. Crossing them off AGAIN and AGAIN and maybe stabbing at them a little bit.

I forgot to use my new notepad for the first couple of days after I bought it, because I was too busy trying to find, I don’t know, socks. I can’t remember why I didn’t use it. Finally I remembered to use the notepad, and I spent a day crossing items off my list and feeling terribly organized and accomplished. The next day I went to write a new list, and I couldn’t find the notepad. I still haven’t found it.

So now my to-do list is in my head, and at the top of it is the item OH MY GOD FIND THE FUCKING NOTEPAD. I could buy another one, sure, but that would be admitting defeat. Plus it would be another errand and then another entire day would be gone, poof, like that.

EIGHT

Today my boy, my Henry Jacob, turns eight. Eight! He ties his own shoes and solves complex math problems and can recite entire passages of "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." I...yeah. Words fail me.

But I can't sit around today singing "Sunrise, Sunset" and sniffling into Minty Bear (technically, Minty Bear II). I've got a cake to bake, an apartment to clean (my family's coming over, and you know my mom's going to notice the tumbleweed of cat hair floating across the kitchen) and, most importantly (for Henry) a staggeringly large Lego box to wrap. (This last part will probably take me an hour and cause me to somehow waste an entire roll of wrapping paper, because even though I'm technically an adult, I seem to be missing the adult life-skills I thought I'd have perfected by now, like "wrapping" and "folding laundry.")

(On the other hand, I finally figured out how to snap my fingers! Life list!)

Anyhoo, why don't you take a moment to read Henry's birth story? I mean, if not today, when? It has Dan Rather, and mooing. I couldn't have created a better story out of my imagination. Which is true of quite a lot of things in my life, not least of which is my son.

Happy birthday, Henry. I love you so much it's stupid.