cheater cheater pumpkin eater

a few posts ago, susan at porcini chronicles asked if i would post on this topic...

The Seven Songs I Would Pick If I Could Only Listen To Seven Songs For The Rest Of My Life, Which, Yeah, Like Someone Is Going To Impose That...

and her challenge tormented me. seven? only seven? i listened to all the 5-star-rated tunes on my ipod for a few days. i jotted, i thought. i scribbled out and re-added songs. why would this be so impotant to me? i'm not sure why, but i just couldn't narrow the list.

then, the lovely lainey-paney over at life is just so daily tagged me to post my 3 favorite songs. i suddenly saw a way out of my dilemma. 7 + 3=10, right? ten songs! i didn't have to narrow it down to seven anymore! the challenge seemed surmountable now!

here they are, the 10 songs i consider my favorite, in no particular order. difficult, because they are changeable due to mood, year, insanity... whatever. i'm so noncommittal, aren't i?

• i don't want to live on the moon by ernie from sesame street
• the rainbow connection by kermit from the muppets
• walkin' after midnight by patsy cline
• mr blue sky by elo
• you put your arms around me by sinead o'connor
• long may you run by neil young
• ob-la-di, ob-la-da by the beatles (sorry j)
• one by u2
• the obvious child by paul simon

anyone else that wants to play by my cheater's rules, be my guest. i'd love to see what y'all have to say.

kudos

i

made

an

image

link.

IT IS A MIRACLE! I AM SO HTML CHALLENGED!

look in the left toolbar at the "ride for kids" photo. it actually links to the donation site.

for real!

i am so proud of myself, so here's a pat on the back to me.

vibrating shiatsu bed with built-in footwarmer!

while lying in bed this morning, somewhere between consciousness and sleep, i thought, "how lucky am i?"

one cat on the bed purring loudly, the other cat on my back purring almost as loudly, and the two of them together making the whole bed seem to rumble. the cat on my back is massaging with his front paws, nice and relaxing.

upon my feet lies the nice, warm, furry dog.

do we live in the lap of luxury or what?

ride for kids

warning: a shameless request for a fundraiser follows!

on may 6th, my darling husband is participating in the triangle ride for kids , a motorcycle trip through our beautiful area to raise funds for the pediatric brain tumor foundation.

i'm trying to make a button to go in my left toolbar, but please be patient with me! if you'd like to make a secure, tax-deductible donation by credit card, or would like any more information about this ride, you can go to his personal fundraising page here.

thanks in advance to anyone generous enough to donate to this wonderful cause!

gripes

yesterday i started-- and almost finished and posted-- a rant about the crappy day i had overreacting to relatively small annoyances. i got distracted, i didn't finish it (you have no idea how many times that happens to me) and i'm really glad i didn't. it was a self-indulgent bitch-fest, and i'm glad to now post a happy happy joy joy entry.

first of all, last night my friend jen and i (hi jen! she is a silent reader or "lurker" here) went out for sushi for her birthday. that is, i got big ol' slabs o' raw fishies while she got the cooked stuff. needless to say, i left sated and happy. the shopping beforehand didn't hurt the situation.

today i packed it in quickly and headed to school. can i tell you, I LOVE OUR SCHOOL. i'm waiting for something annoying and terrible to happen because we have had 3 years of luck, love, happiness and community at our little country school and i can't imagine a better environment for our kids. today i was in the kindergarten (tuesday i did the 2nd grade thang) because it was the last day before spring break.

first of all, they had a "carnival" for all the kids, k-8. it was just a few inflatable bouncing thingies and some little carnival games and some cotton candy thrown in to stick everything together, but it was so sweet! and the kids loved it. i thought for SURE it was all fun & games until someone got hurt but NO! not a tear in the house.

then, s's class had won the supply drive contest... that is... they had brought in the most supplies for the pta thrift shop. that meant PIZZA PARTY! so, after finger painting, we all washed our hands and dug into free pizza instead of cafeteria food. yahoo!

after the first 2 parties, it was clearly time for a third party in the kindergarten. an easter party! they all donned their bunny ears and grabbed their easter baskets made from milk jugs and hopped out to the palyground to hunt for eggs. so cute! after that, back to the classroom for treats (dessert i guess) and goody bags. what a day!

i know i talk to people whose teachers aren't allowed to even touch the kids to give them a hug when they are crying for politically correct reasons. i am proud to say that at our school the hugs and love are spread liberally over our children and I'M GLAD. there are so many parent volunteers, assistant teachers, support staff, and lead teachers to love on our kids it's not even funny. and it's a small enough school that my kids and i know many of the teachers, parents, and students personally. i feel like each one is watching out for my kids as if they were their own... i know that's what i do!

a few more good things came of the day, mostly that the lovely music teacher agreed to give s singing lessons after school, and h won the "caricature of the art teacher" contest. it's a truly hilarious piece, and i hope i can get a scan to show you. she said, "the drawing doesn't necessarily show what i look like on the OUTSIDE but rather what i feel like on the INSIDE."

t is gone to a concert tonight... seeing "peeping tom," a group fronted by mike patton of "faith no more" of whom he is a huge fan. i'm sipping wine, listening to tunes, and belting them out at the top of my lungs. whenever i get a touch of laryngitis, i find that this helps me get my singing voice back more quickly, and it's also therapy for the soul.

aren't you glad i didn't gripe?

backfire

i've decided that i'm not only quitting this blog, but i'm going to delete the whole thing from the blogosphere forever.

april fools!

yesterday, s was all about tomorrow being april fools day. she went on and oN AND ON! about the tricks she was going to play on us... spiders crawling in the hair and the whole kindergarten nine yards. she plotted and schemed, and kept asking how much longer until she could fool us.

normally we forget the holiday entirely at our house, but since she had made such a big deal out of it, i suppose it was on our minds. while the kids were sitting on the sofa watching cartoons and eating pillsbury cinnamon rolls this morning, t walked up to s and said, "OH MY GOSH! I HAVE NEVER SEEN SUCH A HUGE TICK IN MY LIFE AND IT'S CRAWLING ON YOUR FOREHEAD" to s. her face flushed, she looked entirely panicked, and you could almost see as the sweat beads began to form on her pretty little brow. "HOLD ON! LET ME GET IT OFF!" he hollered at her as she flinched.

"APRIL FOOL!" he blared, right at the same moment that she burst, wailing, into uncontrollable tears. i was laughing through my own tears as i held and rocked her, soothing that it was okay, it was just a joke. bad parents! bad, BAD parents!

she and i plotted how to get daddy back, and h in the process. when they came in from outside, she bounced up to them with a big grin and blurted, "I BROKE YOUR NEW REMOTE CONTROL DALEK! (a dalek is a robot totalitarian from bbc's hit show "dr who" that both our boys are nuts for)" daddy obviously knew it was a joke, so he made a big deal out of it, but poor h was in the background, his face crumpling.

"APRIL FOOL!" shouted s as h finally caught on and daddy declared how well she had "gotten" him. a minute later, she climbed up in my lap and said," mommy? do you promise you won't tell daddy something?" "of course i won't tell him, honey," i cajoled (i'll just post it on the internet for the entire world to see). "what is it?" she started to cry as she said, "when i told daddy about the dalek, i thought i was going to get in TROUBLE!" boo-hoo-hoo.

what a mess! i'm not sure we're quite ready for celebrating april fools day at our house. we'll try it again in 5 years and i'll let you know how it goes.

p.s. she got her hair put in french braids as a special treat for tolerating our bad parenting, so now she's bubbly again.

deterioration

monday was a teacher workday, so the kids had a vacation day from school. yahooo! it was SO enthralling that they each came up with their dream for the day.



s's dream was to have her face painted like the one in our face painting book entitled "japanese doll." we did her hair in flowers and bows, and altogether i think it turned out pretty cute.

h's desire was to go to the "wooden park"... a big park with a wooden playstructure that we hadn't been to in a long time. the upshot was that we had to pack a picnic lunch also. done! what a fantastic idea for such a lovely 70 degree and sunny day. they bounced...
they pretended...
then they swang...

...ran, rolled, climbed and got red-faced and exhausted. we ate our picnic lunch of peanut butter sandwiches...

and by this time, with all the activity and fun, s's look had deteriorated to this...


she looked like she had mascara running down her face and was completely bedraggled and happy.

it was a good day.

electronics issues

while on vacation, the first few days t and i took some nice photos to remember our tropical island trip. like these, for example...




and on the third evening, while taking a twilight stroll along the water's edge, the camera died with no warning. now, the camera was a cheapie to begin with, and had seen us through many a party, holiday, trip, and embarrassing moment, so we were only sad that we couldn't record any more memories. and those throwaway cameras they sell at the gift shops?? overpriced and they take lousy pictures.

we returned home and as we showed my folks the photos, we told them that there might be more but the camera had died. my mom got a funny look on her face, and proceeded to tell me that h had left our OTHER digital camera out in the rain one night while we were gone. "i didn't have the heart to scold him," she said. well, it WAS an accident, and i left a camera out in the rain a couple of years ago, so i agreed with her decision. i just asked him not to do it again. and the camera is kinda actually mostly fine, sort-of. it takes pictures, but is acting weird. i'll give it a matter of time before it, too, is dead.

the next day, my mom was grabbing something off the counter in our kitchen in preparation for their long trip back to michigan. after the grab, her watch band caught on our 3 year old cuisinart (my friend lisa says squeeze 'n' fart) grind 'n' brew thermal coffee maker and took it down to the floor, smashing some of the little plastic parts in the process. it may be fixable, and in the meantime she let me borrow the brand-new coffee maker that i had just bought for THEM until mine is fixed. i feel like an indian giver! or is that native american giver? or is that whole phrase in the pc wastebasket by now?

if all this wasn't enough, the FOLLOWING day, h was calling his sister from the computer room, "come check this out, s! it's REALLY cool!" my curiosity got the best of me, so i went in to see what was so cool. h was running a MAGNET along the surface of the COMPUTER MONITOR making pretty patterns and colors. "isn't it pretty?" he asked me. i was too busy scraping myself off the floor to answer. needless to say, i explained to him calmly and quietly that he most likely ruined the monitor for good, but that since he didn't know any better it was no big deal. just don't do it again. after degaussing the monitor a few times, it looks pretty good, but will never be quite the same.

of course i'm wondering what will go next, and i'm just hoping it's not one of the computers or a major appliance. or a car.

knock on wood.

hair scare

last night s had a dream about a unicorn with a lovely rainbow-striped horn.

she woke up looking like this:

check out the sassy little pose on that girl!

i'm not sure what the night-time hair fairies are up to at our house, but i'm kinda scared to see what happens to t. after all, this is what the wind & humidity in the caribbean did to his hair:

we were eerily twin-like with our curl explosions... that is until i got the braids. maybe we should've gotten him braided too! THAT woulda been COOOOOOL.

last night i had the strangest dream...

last night i dreamed that buckwheat from "our gang" was battling with medusa the snake haired woman who turned men to stone with her evil gaze ON MY HEAD.

this is what i found when i awoke:

hee hee! no, really, a gorgeous dominican woman tamed my wild curl-bomb head by the poolside last sunday with gobs of vaseline and deft fingers.

check out that fivehead on me! whew.

hola!

it would make a much more interesting vacation story if i could tell you what miseries were had on our vacation to the grand palladium resort in punta cana, dominican republic. the terrible flight delays, the hotel switching rooms, the bars serving watered drinks, the restaurant food not only disgusting but sickening as well...

but the truth of it is, would you mind seeing this view off the end of your toes during the middle of the week? tropical turquoise caribbean waters and sugar-sand beaches?

and don't i look really stressed out with that pina colada melting away in the warm sun?

no snarky comments about my luminous whiteness, please.

and the cafe con leche, served up hot and fresh each morning? ugh! simply awful.

the view from the room was miserable and disappointing...as was the dark and cramped room...
if i told you the truth about our relaxing vacation, you'd be bored to tears and back again. everything was so nice, pleasant, wonderful and happy! that is, except for the lingering blistering sunburn on t's chest and shins. ugh.

glad to be home (to daughter with the flu) and excited to catch up on y'all's blogs! i'll post more photos soon.

p.s. t is opposed to me posting the "half-nude" photo of myself. any other objections? now, tell the truth!

and... THEY'RE OFF!

please excuse me for a week...

i must go soak up sun, food and drinks in the dominican republic with my darling husband.

don't worry, i'll be back before you can miss me with some nice photos and a nice relaxed attitude... until april 16th, that is. although april 15th IS our anniversary, so maybe i'll have some celebratory cheer left over for tax day.

for now, i must scurry to see who gets booted from 'american idol' AND 'america's next top model.' i suck, i know.

deep in the heart of taxes

sorry i've been unpresent lately. i've also been unpleasant as i am every year at this time due to being buried neck-deep in tax receipts.

self-employment means keeping track of all your expenses so that you can deduct them. smart people log each receipt into the correct category in quicken each time it comes in. melissa is stupid... she waits until the last possible second to file, add and report deductions to the accountant. melissa was an ART MAJOR. melissa needs a business manager.

in other news, i've been scanning my gram's old photo albums so that she can have them back. she's been busy lately taking a trip down her 97 years of memory lane and i'm hogging 3 of her books. they're absolutely fascinating! i don't know about you, but family histories and geneaology fascinate the heck out of me. here's an example of what i've found...

this is a photo of my great-great grandparents with their 4 sons and one daughter who is my great-grandmother carrie (my mom's dad's mom). my great-great grandfather, david, was a union soldier in the civil war. it's crazy to me that this photo documentation even exists, and that my kids will be able to have a photo of their great-great-great grandparents.

here's another photo of carrie as a baby.

i just love looking at the details and the styles of the clothing and furniture. and check out that smirk on her little face! you don't imagine she was horribly spoiled being the youngest and only daughter of 5 children, do you?

other than those two things i've been up to, i'm packing for our trip to the d.r. since we're leaving on thursday. i can't wait to get the heck outta dodge! i think i need a break.

holes in her head

on friday afternoon i was at the mall with my mom & dad, browsing about for nothing in particular. at a sassy little jewelry boutique (i have no idea what such a cool place is doing in the middle of a major metropolitan mall) i spotted a pair of shiny day-glo pink kitty earrings for pierced ears. awww, what the heck? i thought to myself. i'll get them for s in case she ever wants to get her ears pierced.

surprise, surprise. when she got home from school and saw those shiny cool earrings, she was all ready to hop in the car and head off to the mall to get her ears pierced! i was honestly floored... we hadn't much talked about the issue of holes in ears yet. although... my ears were pierced for my 6th birthday, and she is almost already there. i figured she must be about ready and we discussed the issue a little further. she seemed completely unfazed by the grim details... just "yep, uh-huh, and whatever, mom."

although i wasn't about to go back to the mall that day, i made a bargain for us to go after dance class on saturday. luckily there's a jewelry store just around the corner from dance class (and from all the deliciousness at whole foods) so we popped in there while h was dancing and asked if they did piercing. yippee, they did! the saleslady pulled out the array of earring choices and i held my tongue. some of them were really expensive! i'm glad i kept my mouth shut because my darling little daughter chose the cheapest of stainless steel balls. whew!

we sat her down in a little chair while mommy pulled out ice packs to numb her ears. she practically rolled her eyes at my neurotic behavior, so i gave up and gave in to the screaming that was sure to follow (don't worry... there was motrin ready in my bag).

one ear... CLICK!-- and she said, "that didn't even hurt."

next ear-- CLICK!-- "that didn't hurt either."

i was all excited... bouncing up and down, telling her how cute she looked, having her look in a mirror but she --at all of 5 years old-- was cool as a cucumber. "when can i wear the little pink kitties?" she asked.

"in 6 weeks you can change your earrings," replied the kindly piercer.

so every morning since then, all 2 days worth, s has asked me... "how many more days?" but she HAS shown more excitement about them, especially when showing her brother, daddy, and grandma & papa. today is her show & tell day at school, and she chose to show her newly pierced ears.

do any of you remember the day you got your ears pierced for the first time? i'm sure it's a day that will live in legend in her (and mine, too!) brain forever.

mr. L

when my kindergarten daughter brought this home from school yesterday, i decided to post it as a shout-out to one of my "oldest" blogfriends mr. l since it obviously reminded me of him. can you imagine why?

well, maybe you can't see the picture clearly enough, but it's of the letter person mr. l... the current letter of interest in her kindy class. the best thing about mr.l (the letter person that is, not the real person)? let me have my daughter explain it:

i asked her if she meant to write "mr. l LICKS lemon lollipops," or "mr. l LIKES lemon lollipops." she said, "both." imagine a world where one written word encompasses two unique and valid thoughts on the subject. that is the world of a kindergartner!

the real mr.l just has a ferociously dry wit, and has had a wee case of blog clog as of late, a case which i've been lamenting. here's wishing him over his ailment, and if you're out there in the blogosphere reading this mr. l--- HEY! keep on writing!