Sunday, August 24, 2008

A Vote In Favor Of Online Shopping

Well, I managed to outdo myself today. 

This morning I had the chance to go shopping and have lunch with a girlfriend.  It was one of the rare chances I've had to be out and about like a grown up all summer long.  We went to an art festival where we browsed to our heart's content.  Then we did some shopping.  You know how some days nothing fits or even looks worth trying on?  Today I was having an "on" day.  I found things I liked that fit, looked good, and were even on sale.  I tell you, I was on a roll.  We stopped to have lunch at a nice restaurant overlooking the water.  My friend put it perfectly when she described our day as "civilized". 

After lunch we decided to continue shopping.  We wandered into an Anthropologie type store that I  would never usually bother with.  But I was on a hot streak!  I decided to try on some trendy tops to see if the magic would continue.  As I pulled one over my head, the collar sort of flipped and the price tag, which was made of heavy duty card stock flew up and hit me in the face.  I checked for damage in the mirror, and sure enough, the tag had sliced the edge of my nostril.  I was actually bleeding.  And did I have a tissue in my purse?  Of course not.  My friend offered to get me one, but all she could come up with was a paper towel.  The good news is that I managed to not bleed on any of the merchandise.  The bad news is that I had to walk back to the car with a wadded up, bloody paper towel pressed to my face.


Friday, August 22, 2008

Adventures With Laundry Baskets

It comes as a shock to exactly no one that I am what you might refer to as clumsy.   One of my major downfalls is the seemingly innocuous laundry basket.  This is especially problematic as I do laundry on pretty much a daily basis.  On successive days last week I had the following adventures:

I was carrying a basket filled with clean, folded laundry upstairs.  As I know I have a problem gauging widths with the basket in front of me, I made sure to turn it so that I was holding it lengthwise, thereby eliminating the problem of fitting through doorways.   At the top of the steps, I turned to enter my bedroom.  I knew I'd make it smoothly into the room so I was moving at a fairly good clip.  Turns out that I'd neglected to calculate the need for a larger turning radius with the basket sticking that much further out in front of me.  I realized this when I turned to the left but instead of moving effortlessly into the bedroom, I hit the right side of the door frame with such force that the air exiting my lungs made an OOOOOFing sound loud enough for the children to come check on me.  By the grace of God, I managed to avoid pinballing myself right back down the stairs.  In the midst of all this, I found myself thinking what an extremely effective Heimlich maneuver this would make.  (Sure, you're laughing now, but you'll be thanking me when this little trick saves your mocking, black-hearted life.

The very next day I carried a basket of dirty sheets and towels down the stairs.  Lesson learned, this time I made sure to hold it the regular way.   As I passed by the downstairs bathroom on the way to the washer I decided to grab the hand towel and add it to the load.  I shifted the laundry basket under my left arm and side- stepped into the bathroom to reach for the towel.  My momentum into the bathroom was halted, yet again, by the width of the basket.   Like that claw thingy that Batman throws, the basket had effectively locked me in place.  I stretched out my right arm towards the towel.  No good.  I bent my knees and reached again. So close.  No way was I going to let that son of a bitch basket win.  Using it to my advantage, I let the tightly wedged basket counterbalance me as I made one final lunge towards the towel.  Success!  Suck it, laundry basket!!   Honest to God, I felt a surge of triumph.  At, um, overcoming my own stupidity and lack of spatial ability. 

<sigh>

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

I Promise!

Where has August gone?  Maybe you, like me, have had your time sucked away by the Olympics.  You know, where you stay up late watching things that you would never watch if they weren't Olympics?  Like, say, water polo? Or women's softball?  But I can't blame my lack of blogging entirely on patriotism.  I had a few other major distractions like plowing through the Twilight series in a couple of weeks.  (I think there is a special place in literary hell for me because I started To Kill A Mockingbird, then put it down 1/3 of the way through to whip through the last three Twilight books.)  Also, I may have developed a teeny-tiny new addiction to Facebook.  It reminds me of my old days on AOL (all 13 years of them).  You can sign on and see if your friends are there!  You can chat!  Look at pictures!  Send those mystery hatching eggs!  Superpoke!!

Are those enough excuses?  My point is that tomorrow we leave for 6 days in Sunriver and I plan to do a nice chunk of blogging while we're there.  So, get nice and comfy there on the edge of your seats. 


Now I'm off to update my Facebook status.



Friday, August 1, 2008

Juliana's One Woman Show

Over 4th of July, we spent a few days in Seattle.  I enjoy traveling;  I like the sight-seeing, the change of scenery and being removed from the daily grind of meals and laundry.  But there is one thing about traveling that makes me never want to leave home: having my entire family in one hotel room.  When the kids were younger, it was mainly about trying to get them to fall asleep with us right in the room.  Many an evening was spent sitting on the floor outside the bathroom trying to read by the crack of light filtering through the door.  Now that the kids are older,  we have fights about who has to sleep together.  Often we'll end up with a boy bed and a girl bed.  On our first night in Seattle, we ended up getting a roll away bed so the kids didn't have to sleep together and so that I could actually share a bed with my husband.  (This of course led to a $20 charge and more fighting over who had to sleep on the roll away.  (That would be David as he is the high maintenance sleeper in the family.))

That night, I fell asleep fairly early but around 11:30 I was awakened by Juliana making fussy sounds.  I got up and checked on her, but the covers were pulled over her head and I thought she was asleep.  I climbed back in bed but soon heard her thrashing around and whimpering some more.  I got up yet again and pulled the covers back only to find her on the verge of tears saying, "I'm so tired by I can't sleep because of Daddy's loud snoring!" 

I stifled a laugh, snuggled with her, and she fell right asleep.  In the morning she put on this one woman show to demonstrate her night. How I wish I'd had a video camera.  Hopefully the still photos will do the trick.

"This was David"

(gentle snoring)


"This was Daddy"

( loud snoring)


"This was Mommy"


(such angelic sleeping!)


"This was me"


(gritted teeth and frustrated whimpering)