Memories, or Lack Thereof

Yesterday was my birthday.  I celebrated by forgetting something.  It's just what I do.


The family of our beloved baby sitter Hannah kindly invited our children over to make cookies and do other fun things.  (I have no idea what those fun things were; I tend not to ask too many questions when people volunteer to watch our kids.  Parenting at its finest, friends.)  The plan was then for Hannah to take our kiddos back to our house, feed them and put them to bed.  Great.  Super.  Whatever.  As long as I'm not there having to help.

But as it turns out, a key is required to unlock doors that have been locked.  This would have been helpful information to remember after I left the house and locked the front door and before we dropped our children off but not our house key.

You should have seen Derek's face when he got the text from Hannah's mom about the lack of a house key.  (The text went to Derek's phone because my phone was, of course, dead as a doornail.  I also forgot to charge my phone.  Are you sensing a trend here?  No?  Just wait.  I'll hammer that point home before this post is over.)  It was a bit of a cross between mild surprise and grim resignation.  I'm pretty sure there was a sigh in there, too.

It's not like this has ever been a secret in our relationship.  A few days before we were married, we drove 45 minutes south, crossing the state line to visit the courthouse in the county our wedding was taking place to apply for the marriage license.  Upon arrival, I realized I had forgotten the letter from our pastor stating we had completed a premarital course.  (That's right:  The state of Oklahoma gives you a discount on your marriage license if you go through some kind of premarital advisement, course, or counseling.  Bravo, Oklahoma.)  Fortunately, I was able to call the church office (where they know me well enough to know that if we're talking memory work or an academic test, well, I'm your gal!  If you want something that's actually useful to everyday life, I'm one very small step up from worthless), and they were kind enough to fax a copy of the letter straight into the office there at the courthouse.

Then, just to make sure Derek knew what he was getting himself into, on our wedding day I forgot the marriage license at my mom's house- again, 45 minutes away- didn't realize it until after the ceremony when it was time to sign it, and a very kind guest drove to my mom's house and back to the wedding so we could sign it and, you know, legally be married.

His reaction was a little more pronounced all those years ago.  Not terrible, but not just a simple sigh and shaking of his head.

I wonder if it will even register when I forget something important in another ten years?  And what are we going to do if I ever develop dementia?  It's gonna take forever for him to differentiate between the red flags of the disease and my normal quirks.

I'm pretty sure I meant to go somewhere else with this post, but I've forgotten just where that was.  How peculiar.






P.S.  What's a doornail?  Seriously?

Now It's Extra-Dirty Laundry

Yesterday my mom asked if she should bring her carpet shampooer when she next comes for a visit here in a few weeks.  She has not yet learned that the answer to this question is always, always "Yes."  Not that I mind finding those surprise crunchy parts of the carpet upstairs- it's like a super fun game that no one wins.

This week's carpet deposits include the puke-fest that inspired a middle of the night half-coherent Christmas song rip-off and our other son's contribution, which we discovered when he came into our room the other night and proudly announced, "I just peed on my dirty clothes basket!"  I investigated this claim, and sure enough:  dirty clothes- soaked.  Hamper- soaked.  Carpet all around the hamper- soaked.  Wall behind the hamper- dripping.  That kid must have been banking his milk all day, looking forward to this little gift.  Three-year-olds are such givers.

He seemed genuinely astonished and not a little disgruntled when he got a spanking for his efforts.  It would seem that his imagination supplied visions of a pat on the back, or perhaps exclamations of wonderment at this new-found masculine ability to pee wherever the heck he wants, all while standing up.

It was my sad duty to disabuse him of this notion.


Yes, Mom.  Please bring the carpet shampooer.

Angle Trees

Apparently today is some sort of giving day.  Like, donate to your favorite charity, give money to those in need, think of someone besides yourself for once this Christmas season.  And I am all for that.  All. For. It.

But.


If I see one more person use the internets to type "Can't wait to go visit the Angle Tree!" or "Our family is getting one Angle for each member of our family this year!" or "Headed to pick out an Angle off the Angle Tree!" I am going to lose it.

I know what they mean.  Obviously, they mean "Angel Tree."  (At least, I think that's what they mean.  I created the below Angle Tree concept because I guess you never know.)  You know, the tree where you pick out an "angel" that describes a local needy family and purchase whatever it is they need this holiday season?

Obviously, the Angel Tree program is a wonderful one.  The Angle Tree program, on the other hand?  That's forcing math on people, at Christmas of all times.  It's not going to make you any friends, except weird people who like math.

Art courtesy of moi.  Truly, I have a gift.  It's not artistic ability, but that's beside the point.

Would you look at that!  Mr. H was right:  I just used Geometry in my adult life.  The man was a prophet, not a liar like I'd so long assumed.  Or maybe he was just a desperate teacher trying to motivate his sullen students to care about Geometry.  

I'm leaning toward prophet.

Thanksgiving Travels

Our family spent the last week down south, eating and seeing family and eating and going to movies and eating and visiting with friends and eating and enjoying warmer temperatures and also eating.

I took half a million pictures (but still missed a bunch of stuff I wanted photos of), so I think I'll spend this week highlighting a few per day.



First up:  The Best Movie Theater in the Entire World.





Or at least in the midwest.  And if not the midwest, then in Kansas.  Or maybe just in southern Kansas.  Or just in the Wichita area.  Definitely the best movie theater in the Wichita area.  Also in the world, as far as I'm concerned.

ANYWAY.  The Warren Theatre ("theatre" because Wichitans like to pretend they're British?) on the east side of Wichita is my favorite theater ("theater" because I'm perfectly aware no one will ever mistake me for a Brit) ever.  But I think I've already established that.  It's huge and everything is art deco and covered in gilt and velvet, there's a fireplace in the bathroom, a balcony in the biggest theater (the one pictured above, where we watched Catching Fire) where 21+ can sit and have a meal and be waited on while watching the movie, and there's an old-fashioned diner just off the lobby and everything speaks of old Hollywood glamour.  Derek and I drove an hour north just so we could see the movie in this theater.  Oh, and so we could double date with old friends we don't get to see enough of.  That too.  (Somehow I got a photo of the movie theater but not of our friends.  Priorities:  I have them.)  Big thanks to Mom and Mark for watching the kiddos so we could visit the theater!  And our friends.




We also jumped on the trampoline:

That's Derek, Adelaide, and me, although Adelaide and I were the only ones who made sure to spend plenty of time jumping every single day we were at my mom's house.

I also finally got to meet my friend Megan's baby Iris, who is beautiful in fact and in name:

She's pretty and tiny and petite in a way our children never were.  (They were never tiny and petite.  Of course I thought they were pretty.  Most of the time.)  Well, Adelaide was petite for about five seconds after she was born then she discovered eating and started growing and hasn't stopped, which I realize is a good thing, but I'm still a little freaked out about the thought of my children someday being taller than me.  My sisters and I never reached the height of either of our parents, so it's sort of unimaginable to me.  Don't get me wrong; I want our kids to be taller than 5'4", but still... it's hard to picture.

  

We also got to ride in a horse-drawn wagon, and our friend Liza, the driver, invited Adelaide and Atticus to come sit beside her, which they jumped at.  She gave them an impromptu lesson and answered millions of questions.

Liza's sister Anna was there with her adorable baby Kenyon, but of course I didn't get a picture of that.  It would have made too much sense.

I also didn't get any pictures of Derek and Mark golfing (que lastima), or any of the portion of our trip at Derek's parents' house, which actually is a shame.  

Never fear, though!  There are still plenty of baby pictures to look forward to this week!

Do You Hear What I Hear?

(Sung to the tune of the Christmas song by the same name)


Said the dark house to the tired mom,
"Do you hear what I hear?
Ringing through night, tired mom
Do you hear what I hear?
The sound, the sound,
Splashing on the floor
Vomit containing reconstituted pizza, berries, and God knows what else
Vomit containing reconstituted pizza, berries, and God knows what else


Said the dark house to the tired mom,
"Do you see what I see?
Spread all through your home, tired mom
Do you see what I see?
Your son, your son,
A mere foot away from the toilet
Choosing instead to barf all over the carpet, the wall, and himself
Choosing instead to barf all over the carpet, the wall, and himself


Said the mom to her sick little boy,
"Do you know what I know?
Covered in your own bodily fluids, little boy
Do you know what I know?
This carpet cleaner, this carpet cleaner,
Doesn't work for crap
Oh for crying out loud please stop finding new surfaces to coat in your puke
Oh for crying out loud please stop finding new surfaces to coat in your puke


Said the the sick boy to his weary mom,
"Listen to what I say!
On your hands and knees, scrubbing, weary mom
Listen to what I say!
I'm choosing, I'm choosing,
(Just to make tonight more interesting!)
To view that perfectly innocuous thermometer as a medieval torture device and that liquid Tylenol as the devil's own elixir
To view that perfectly innocuous thermometer as a medieval torture device and that liquid Tylenol as the devil's own elixir









Note:  I'd like to thank my 3:30 am self for scribbling this little ditty down for me to find in the morning.  Thanks also to Derek for taking the long 4- 6 am Puke Shift, allowing me some sleep before I took a deep breath and dove back in.  My apologies for the overall delirious tone and blatant disregard for little things like meter, proper phrasing, and basic rhyming.

Things That Were Said To Me Yesterday

• "Doesn't take after Mom, does he? *chortle chortle chortle*"  Said by the doctor after calculating the percentile rank for Atticus's height at his yearly well-child appointment.  My son is tall.  I am not.  I get it.  

I desperately wanted to respond with a hearty, fake "HAHAHAHAHAHA," but the key to the faux guffaw is cutting it off abruptly with a stony glare, and anytime I do a big fake laugh I get about three "Ha"s in before I start to laugh for real.  So instead of communicating sarcastic chastisement I'd end up looking completely psychotic, and I generally try to avoid that when in the vicinity of medical professionals evaluating our children.

Of course all this was running through my head immediately after his little joke (Should I try the "HAHAHA"?  Am I finally ready to pull it off?  Or do I really want to risk having my children taken away today?), so I totally missed everything the nurse was saying at that point.  Something about developmental milestones. Probably not important.  (If you're reading this, Derek, don't worry.  I'm sure our son is completely normal.  AS AM I.)

• "Congratulations!  What are you going to do with it first?"  This was from the lady at the Des Moines Public Library Foundation when I was picking up the Kindle I won.  (Yay!)  My answer was something like, "Thank you so much!" and then I purposely avoided answering her question, because I figured it would just come to me when I had a chance to mess around with my prize.  

I got it home, opened up the box, stared at it for a few minutes... and then closed the box again.  I still don't know what to do with it.  I feel like all my books are looking at me all accusingly, like I'm some kind of traitor.  I've never really felt the need for an e-reader; don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to have won the drawing (which I entered by filling out a survey after attending a talk by the author Amy Tan, who, by the way, is immensely entertaining to listen to- if you ever get a chance to hear her speak or to go to one of her readings, definitely, definitely go), but I'm very much an ink-and-paper kind of person.  Books make me happy.  I redecorate my house by rearranging my books.  True, I've had Fahrenheit 451-esque nightmares before (literally), but still... I don't know.  So now I have this lovely prize sitting in my house, and I don't know what to do with it.  Help!  ( I can't help but think this is nothing like the time I won that one awesome prize- I absolutely knew what to do with that.  First I made cookies.  Then I made more cookies.  After that I went a little wild and made cookies again.)

• "Woman, are you crazy?!"  This was from Adelaide when I informed her we were having popcorn for supper.  Our family eats enough that anymore it's actually somehow less work to just cook a regular meal every night, but we're scraping the bottom of the food barrel and my sister and I decided via text that popcorn is an excellent source of fiber and therefore healthy.  (Don't bother disabusing me of this notion.  It's called willful denial, friends, and it's oodles of fun.)  I'm sure it was especially healthy after I added melted butter and garlic salt.  Supper of Champions.  (And people with high cholesterol.)

Lists, Glorious Lists

• Atticus and I were baking together recently (boy loves to bake and cook and do anything remotely related to food prep, so I've been putting him to work and calling it education), and we were examining one of the measuring spoons.  I explained that "1 tsp" means "1 teaspoon," but he also wanted to know what all the other words on the spoon said.  "Well, 'Tailormade' must be the name of the company that makes this spoon, and 'China' is the country where it's made," I said.  He mulled that over for a few seconds, then rather firmly told me, "China is in hell."  I did my best to explain basic world geography and where China exists on the globe in relation to us, but I'm not sure he believed me.  Maybe because I was laughing the entire time.  

• I'm thinking of converting our laundry room into a laundry/operating room- you know, with scalpels and super bright lights and flattering face masks?  This isn't just a random whim on my part (this time); Adelaide has gotten... I don't know, six?  Seven?  Call it seven splinters over the past several months, and I don't mean tiny little slivers of wood in her fingers, I mean small twigs that the school nurse has to call and tell me about because she tried to extricate it at school but was afraid to do too much, especially given the fact that that one was in her belly (I know, okay?  I don't know what that child is doing at school), where the skin is pretty sensitive.  I spent twenty minutes digging one out of her heel Saturday evening that was around a quarter inch long and way thicker than the needle I was having to use to peel all the skin away just to get to it.  After sterilizing a needle and tweezers and rigging a Black and Decker heavy duty flashlight to shine just right and laying her down rather awkwardly on a bench so I could get at her foot, I decided I just need an OR right on site.  Because Adelaide didn't find the whole thing traumatic enough.  (But I got that sucker out!)

• I'm going to a cookie exchange in a few weeks.  I've used my two favorite cookie recipes at the last couple exchanges and am hunting for a new one to take- right now I have it narrowed down to Kitchen Sink Cookies (which I've made for a couple different crowds, all with excellent reviews) or Brown Butter Salted Caramel Snickerdoodles (which I've never made but sound divine).  Or should I do something completely different?  Do any of you have a cookie recipe that's the bomb diggity?  Care to share?