Happy And Flappy

So sweet, this girl of mine.  Gracie is looking for songs on YouTube on my phone that she can dance to.  One song was completely annoying, but it got her going and she loved it so much that she starting hopping.  Pretty soon, she was flapping her hands in the air as fast as she could.

Here she was, bouncing and flapping to a song that I suddenly no longer found annoying, and I said,

“You sure look like you’re having fun! How flappy!”

While still bouncing and flapping, she smiled and said,

“It feels so weird! It is WEIRD!”

“Weird is awesome, huh?”

“It is WEIRD!” ::giggles::

And she kept on flapping.

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It Was Nothing

In case you were wondering, there weren’t any wild animals on my back porch.  This time.  It’s been very windy with big heavy gusts all day.  In fact, there was a news report earlier that about 12,000 people in Connecticut are out of power due to high winds.  Our back porch is closed in and the screen door that leads outside isn’t secured very well, so it bangs around sometimes.  If it’s opened enough, an animal could come in looking for shelter.  Birds sometimes come in through little holes in the screen.  It’s really okay.  I made my husband check.

Luckily the back doors are very secure so they can’t get into the house, but still.

There weren’t any streaks of blood either, so I’m fairly certain it wasn’t zombies either.

 

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Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do?

Apple, Kiwi, Lemon, Bananas, Annoying Orange, and Pear. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was driving with Anneliese (7 years old) and Gracie in the car after dropping the eldest girl off at middle school and were on the way back home to get them onto the bus.  Out of nowhere, Anneliese deadpans:

“Sometimes people are just too nice.  It’s so annoying.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nice people annoy me.  You know, when people are ‘tooooooo niiiiice?’ That’s annoying.  It makes me want to slap them and then walk away.” *~*

“Why would you say that?”

“Boys.  All the boys that like me are SO NICE TO ME it’s annoying.  They’re mean and rude and silly until they decide they’re in love with me and then they’re so nice it’s annoying.”

::after picking my jaw up from the floor in my head:: “Would you rather they pull your hair? ‘Oh hey, I like you so I’m going to punch you in the face and get your attention that way! Maybe you’ll punch me in the stomach and that’ll mean you like me too!’ Is that what you want? Or is this better… ‘Oh Anna, I love you so I’m going to stop trying to yank your skirt and give you chocolate instead! I won’t hurt you anymore, I’ll just try to make your butt fat! But that’s okay, I’ll love you whether you’re fat or skinny!”

She collapsed into giggles, and kept asking me to play both sides of the annoying-nice/loving-nice fence.  I foresee very bad teen and college dating years.  She’s going to go after the bad boys, isn’t she?

 

 

*~*DISCLAIMER: The Mister and I do not go around slapping people, each other, or our children.  We don’t go around saying people are “too nice” and emphasize that people should be nice to each other and discourage violence.  Just sayin’.  ;-)

 

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Beatitudine

Oggi è un giorno triste. Le ragazze vogliono giocare sul Wii, mentre la musicaincessante videogioco mi spinge lentamente fuori dalla mia mente. Avrei preferitoavere tirato fuori le unghie piuttosto che avere i videogame in casa tutto il giorno.

Non aiuta il fatto che il maltempo sta facendo il mio corpo ferito. Sono scontroso per cominciare, anche se sto cercando di non darlo a vedere. Ho bisogno di una vacanza inuna bella, calda, soleggiata, isola privata dove ci sono uomini belli portando medeliziosi drink e snack tutto il giorno mentre ho letto libri sulla spiaggia.

Non ci sono telefoni cellulari. No televisione. Non ho figli. Stranieri solo giocandomusica soft, mi divertente e che mi rinfresco. Questo avrebbe dovuto durare un mese, naturalmente. Sarei anonima. Sarebbe stato tutto bello e sarei riuscita a dormire.

Idealmente vorrei essere pagato per questa vacanza.

Qualcuno ha i numeri vincenti della lotteria?

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Books I’d Love To Write

I’ve often imagined being a rich, famous, and well respected author.  I would use less words per sentence, but more flowery speech.  I would say things like,

“Yes, dear, that was a lovely Cabernet.  I particularly enjoyed the bouquet of cherry and hint of chocolate undertones.”

and

“My darling, I’m not quite sure that I agree with your assessment of this week’s The Tudors but I still respect you nonetheless.  Perhaps my agent will be so kind as to set up a tea with the cast Sunday next and we can discuss each of our theories with them then.”

My list of book titles would be expansive.

1. How To Write A Short Story and then not finish it
2. Book Of Useless Poetry
3. Things You Should Never Say To Your Children but probably say every day anyway
4. How To Do It All Wrong And Still Have A Successful Marriage
5. How To Have A Successful Relationship With Your Mom When She’s Your Facebook Friend
6. When You Have One Baby Milestone Book And Three Kids
7. When Even The Cats Are Girls
8. Green Tea Tastes Like Grass but I love it anyway
9. How To Cook Using Chocolate As Much As Possible
10. How To Wing It And Not Let On
11. When Your Cats Love You More Than Your Kids D0
12. Self Taught Chef-ing On A Ridiculous Budget
13. No, My Life Isn’t a Dramedy In Spite Of My Blog
14. At Least My Life Isn’t a Soap Opera
15. I Love My In-Laws; Am I Crazy?
16. How To Gain Weight Even When You Eat Right
17. How To Be A Horrible Housekeeper and still keep up appearances
18. All The Reasons To Wake Up Every Morning although mainly it’s because you can’t sleep in
19. Criss Cross Applesauce and other stupid phrases school taught my kids
20. How Life Turned Me Into An Advocate
21. What I Want To Be When I Grow Up… and other things I can put off  until tomorrow
22. Why Birthdays Are Important To Celebrate For Everyone
23. 1-2-3 Can Mommy Have a Time Out Now?
24. How To Make Marriage Work Even When One Of You Snores
25. Living With What Life Throws At You and maintaining faith while still standing

Hmmm.  I think I can turn several of those “book titles” into blog posts. Ding!

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Fluffy and Deadly

Someone in the house has been dropping silent but deadlies.  I’ve been getting the same response I get when I ask who made a mess on the floor or who was sloppy in the bathroom:

“Twasn’t me, dear Mother.  No, not I.  I promise you, if it were I, I would tell you and own up to it.  I might be embarrassed, but I promise, I traipse to the loo to do my gassy business.”

But then Gracie started assigning blame.  Therein lies the mistake of the silent farter.

“NOT ME! I don’t know who it is! It was the cat!”

Of course I couldn’t outright catch her if the cats were right there and her gaseous bombs were silent.

Recently she’s taken to just outright insisting that she doesn’t fart at all.  In fact, it’s a rule.

“Everyone else farts.  I DON’T FLUFF! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!”

Erm… okay.

I caught her earlier, but she denied, denied, denied and the cat was right there.

“IT. WAS. NOT. ME! I DON’T KNOW WHO! I. DON’T. FLUFF!”

Then it was just us and I HEARD HER.  But I said nothing.  I tapped her shoulder and fake-gasped.  Shocked, she turned to me with big eyes and said:

“It wasn’t me!”

“What wasn’t you?”

“The fart!”

“What fart?”

“Uhhh… YOU LIAR!”

I learned a very valuable lesson today.  I’ll let you know when I figure out what it is.

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Tax “Breaks” In Marriages

So the Mister has been pestering me to get the taxes done now now now do it NOW.  We never have everything this early so I was skeptical when he handed me the folder stuffed full of documents and empty envelopes.

M “We could really use the money as soon as possible so please get this done and filed by tonight.  I mean it.”

J “Are you sure?”

M “Of course.  We’re all set.”

And of course I get to property taxes and we don’t have the car stuff. 

J “Hey honey, where’s the car tax info thingie… stuff? I’m trying to do the property taxes.”

M “What do you mean?”

J “Where’s the paperwork saying what we paid in car taxes?”

M “At city hall.”

::silence::

J “Honey, why isn’t it with the tax folder?”

M “Can’t you just guess based on last year?”

J “What if last year was a guess?” note: Please don’t audit me.

M “Guess again?”

J “How about we go to city hall tomorrow.  I don’t think we should guess.”

M “By ‘we’ you mean ‘me’.”

J “I love you.”

I also love H&R Block.  It’s reduced the stress quotient in the whole “doing your own taxes” thing exponentially.  It makes it easy and user friendly and they’re great with customer loyalty.  But you sort of have to be loyal if you like neat tricks like exporting the tax information from prior years into your current tax paperwork with ease.

I’m a bit of a freak, though.  I enjoy doing taxes once we get past the whole, “I want to punch my husband in the face” stage.  He saves every envelope known to man no matter how useless, torn to shreds, or empty it is in our tax paperwork.  He includes bank and investor junk mail ie. paper spam in our tax folder for me to sort through.  And those software update discs? I have three of them.  They’re all the same, as in identical.  Triplets.  Why three? He even bundled them together for me.  But in spite of this black hole of a folder that sucks in nearly everything in its path, he stuffs relevant receipts into his wallet.  A year’s worth of receipts.  And he doesn’t understand why you have to use the little envelopes the church provides when you make your offering.  ::sigh::  Taxes.  The church sends you a statement at the end of the year with your contributions to include in your effing taxes as a charitable donation.

Every year, something is briefly missing or we’re waiting for something or we forgot something or misplaced it.  Every year I have to sift through the junk folder.  One year there was a second folder.  Every year I ask, “Are you sure?” in a teasing way because I know my husband.  He was so insulted, but… well… you know. We’re us and we need to ask each other questions like that.

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Just Another Chat In The Car

I decided to drive through town on the way home from running errands after school today.  I had the window open as we came up to a traffic light near Geissler’s so you could hear people on the sidewalk as they got off the town bus.  One man in particular was in a great mood as he waved to every car that passed.

“Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Yeah! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Hi! Merry Christmas!”

The girls exchanged looks in the back seats.

Grace: Hey! There’s a man!

Juliana: Oh wow! ::giggle::

Anna: What’s wrong with that man? Is he kwazy or sumfing?

Mommy: No, he’s not crazy.  He’s just happy it’s a beautiful day and is feeling the reason for the season!

Grace: Reason for the season! ::giggles::

Anna: Did you say penis?

Juliana: NO! No penis! Mom, it’s not crazy to just shout Merry Christmas in the air to no one?

Mommy: Not if it’s to everyone.

Grace: Reason for the season! ::giggles::

Juliana: So ANYWAY in science I was a rain drop today!

Anna: Cool! Rain is water! That’s why you shower in it.

Juliana: Yes, but I was saying I was a rain drop.  A drop of water.  It was a project.

Anna: I shower every day with drops of water.  I do it because dat’s what you do with poo-burr-dee.  Poo-bi-dee.

Grace: Pyoo-burr-teeeee.

Anna: Dat’s what I said.  Poo-bi-dee.  You have to wash your body every day when you have poo-bi-dee.  I gonna have poo-burr… bi-dee soon so I have to wash every day.

Juliana: You’re too young to have puberty.

Anna: I’m ready.  I can feel it.  I shower to be ready.  Can I sing the penis song?

Mommy: Enough of that.

Anna: Well I don’t have a buh-gyna song.  Yet.

Mommy: How about a Christmas song?

Juliana: Yeah, like that guy who kept saying Merry Christmas!

Grace: Reason for the season!

Anna: What’s the reason for the season?

Grace & Juliana: JESUS!

Anna: Ohhhhhh! Did Jesus have a…

Mommy: Oh look! There’s our house! We’re home!

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Anna-isms II

Image via Wikipedia

Anneliese is nearing 7 years old faster than I’d like.  She’s such a witty girl and is always saying things that just leave me laughing and trying to cover up.

“Mommy? Are you listening? I know someone at school.  His name is Keanu.  He’s a boy.  His name starts with K.  He did something to me that you are not going to like.  He pretended like he accidentally was going to trip me and then I tripped and hurt myself and he laughed.  It wasn’t an accident after all.  And just you look at what happened to my skin!”

On our way to a Girl Scout meeting I was explaining to the girls that we would be donating a gift and why:

“Needy kids? Hey, I’m a needy kid! Why aren’t  you giving me any gifts?”

“Hey look Mommy! Luna likes the back massager! She’s been making me massage her whole body for an hour! Do I have to keep doing this? My arm is all vibratey.”

I had to assure her that just because the cat wanted to be massaged she didn’t have to do it for hours on end.  She didn’t believe me.

“Hey Julie, Mommy said when I’m ten I might have to have a booster rocket.”

“A what?”

“Another shot for chicken pox.  I had one when I was a year old but I might need a booster rocket when I’m ten.  Did you have a booster rocket?”

And of course bodily functions are never off limits.

“I’m pretty sure I’m about to go frew poo-burr-dee.”

“Why?”

“Julie has poo-burr-dee.  That means I am too.”

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Did He Really Just Say That? II

How can a man who grew up with three sisters, two nieces, a wife who collects special edition Barbie dolls, and has three daughters say:

“What do you mean they want dolls for Christmas? Why would they want more dolls? They have tons of dolls.  They play with those dolls don’t they? What’s the big deal about more dolls? What’s the difference between them all?”

“Honey, when you have a love of dolls there’s a difference.  There’s always a difference.”

“How can they possibly play with them all?”

“They’re just adding to their doll family.”

“They’re just dolls.”

“That’s not how the girls see them.”

“But what do they DO with them?”

“Fantasy play.  Role play.  Silly play.  Social play.  What do you do with your little Dragon Ball Z guys? Or your superhero dolls?”

“They’re not dolls.  They’re action figures.  They’re collectible, that’s totally different.”

“Sure, sure.  Bat Man, the Hulk, Superman, Spiderman… dolls.  Oh, and Wonder Woman porn.  All but naked with the lines colored in. And all of your comic books… they’re all the same right?”

“Action hero novel.”

::pause::

“Have I made my point?”

“I’ll never understand girls and dolls.”

“You have daughters.  Get used to it.”

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