Aaaand we’re off, o’ dark-thirty tomorrow… Yipee! Road Trip!

As I write, Abby is dangling her feet in the dust, as she twirls on the swing set, wearing a purple tu-tu, calling out intelligible babble to her brothers. Copper heads glittering like new pennies, those same brothers, still in their jammies, are hanging upside down from the trapeze, enjoying the different view while watching the wind billow through the trees.

Breakfast is done, but the warm aroma of toasty sausage and cheesy eggs still lingers around the kitchen. Soon the breeze will whirl through, edying in corners and fluttering the linens,  carrying away breakfast and bringing the warmth of afternoon.

It’s officially late summer, and the change in light is palpable- yesterday was still just high bright summer, this morning, the light has shifted, is mellow and golden and easy. The only thing making it “official” is that it has been noticed, but there is always a day, for each season, where the light tips over the edge and flows differently.

Laughter floats in the open window, coupled with an occasional shriek by Beanie. Deeper in the house, the voice of the weather channel babbles importantly to itself- David had begun his Sunday morning pre-church nap, the remote cradled loosely in his sleeping, relaxed hand. The bones of that tender, wanting-to-work hand have begun to knit, the swelling is down, and the cast is off.

This morning, life is just good.

OK, my little experiment is over…I was fiddling around and ended up spending far too long trying to make a fun new site creat what I wanted. The best way for me to explain it is to just send you there- Wordle. It’s a logarithm that takes your blog URL, or whatever text to give it, and creates a typographic piece of artwork. Words that appear more frequently are larger, you can tweak the font, colors and layout, and it is addictive! Give it a shot… But don’t say I didn’t warn you! You may be surprised which words show up…

In the middle of the rattle-y chest cough and horrid summer cold I’ve managed to contract, some good news came my way this morning…

A new nephew has joined our family. All reports indicate mom and baby are doing well, fingers and toes are all present, and baby is darling. Still awaiting a name; but a baby-day is always a happy day. Welcome, sweet little one.

Image via Flickr

Butter is my favorite food group. OK, maybe that’s not true- maybe it’s really cheese, but I’m in the Paula Deen  school of butter philosophy. Everything is better with butter. Lots of butter.

It’s like, midnight thirty, and I can’t sleep. Why? Because I took a NAP today, and my dumb husband let me. What was he thinking? Not only did he let me take a nap, but he FED the kids dinner and put Abby to bed. While I napped. What kind of husband do I have, man. The downside is, I can’t sleep- even a bennedryl isn’t helping, and the monkeys will up bright and early chomping at the bit for me to feed them. See, if I was a good mom, I would use one of the Ree’s recipes and have breakfast casserole all ready. But I’m not. Nor does my husband wear hot chaps to work every day. Sigh…

Serious emotional eating going on here. I have no idea why. Stress? Do I have any stress in my life? Ha! My knee jerk reaction is “no”- seriously, how dumb am I? Pot, meet kettle. So maybe I have some stress. But why oh why do I deal by eating everything carb-y I can lay my glommy little mits on? Oh, look, a vat of sugar! Goody! What can I make? Oh, another pie? Don’t mind if I do, thank you! Oh, look! Some pasta! Mmmmm! Let’s just pick out this ucky green stuff and eat the rest. Mmmmm. It’s the middle of the freakin’ night, and I’m weighing out if I would see anyone I know if I just ran to the grocery store to pick up some frozen TURNOVERS. Crap. What. Is. Wrong. With. Me?

Stupid drive-thrus being open all night. You’re not helping me!!

I chew ice. I’ve heard that’s bad, but I really, really enjoy it- and have since I was a girl. Crushed ice, thank you very much. When I was a kid, we had this old table-top ice crusher, where you filled  a hopper with cubes, turned a crank, and the teeth inside chipped and chopped your ice into shrapnel. I loved it. That was before freezer door ice-dispensers; of which, I consider those second only behind hot running water.

If I ever travel back in time, I want to take a tube of mascara. I have the odd, lash-less look of a rabbit, to quote Scarlett O’Hara, without mascara. A prize for anyone who can name who she was talking about when she said that- and goodness knows, if I’m going to time-travel to the antebellum south, I want Scarlett to like me. Or at least not scoff in derision. Although maybe that’s inevitable, since there is no stay on the planet that could cinch my waist to 16 inches. Mercy.

My daydreams are taken up lately with chopping my hair all off. And getting the new Brazilian keratin hair-straightening treatment Jen wrote about. I’m too lazy tonight to make a link, but trust me, it looks good. Three months of silk hair. I haven’t had my hair short since ninth grade. That was a bad year. It was a bad decision to cut all my hair off. Of course, there were not silicon hair smoothers or other goodies for girls with steel wool instead of hair. My hair grew OUT from my head for a good two years before there was enough weight to pull it down again. There are a great deal of pictures where I resemble nothing so much as the Sphinx in silhouette. Maybe I should re-think the cutting, eh?

Who said “Nothing good happens after midnight.”? Was the GBH? Cause maybe they have a point.

Yard sales have been poopy this month. I don’t think there’s been anything good for a few weeks. Today, out with all three kids (cause THAT is a good idea…), I turned down a deadend street. “Crap!” I hollered at the car. Jeffrey pipes up from the back- “MOM! You’re our role model- you can’t say that!” Me, sweating and wresting the giant gas hog that hauls my family, into a seventeen point turn, considers this quite astute an observation and offer “OK, you’re right Jeff, so you and Bean can scream ‘crap’ one time.” “CRAP!” they both immediately bellow, then break into fits of giggles.  Mom of the Year, right here.

I wonder what it would cost me to get a giant rubber band put around my stomach on the black market? It’s like, I’m too fat for comfort, but not fat enough to be eligible for any medical help. Sometimes, like Cathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes, “I wish I could just say ‘what the hell’, and get really fat.” But not really.

For three days, all I have been craving is Eggs Benedict. I don’t have any lemon. Again, wondering who I might run into at the grocery, and if it’s worth the gamble. There is no way I’m changing from my jammies, and it’s too warm to use a cloak. I’m fresh out of cloaks anyway. Much like riding horses and men wearing hats, I wish we still used cloaks. I don’t want to give up my ice or my mascara, though.

Recurring theme tonight? Time travel. Food. One o’clock now… The drive-thrus are calling me… Forth meal. What kind of marketing BS is that? Cause that’s what we Americans need, another meal. Three squares a day isn’t enough, no sireee. Gimme more. On that note, the drive-thru idea is giving some sympathetic indigestion. Whew. Save from a horrible caloric misstep by my own gurgling stomach acid! Woooo-hoo!

I paid Jeffrey a box of Lemonheads for him to let me pluck a wild hair he had growing from his cheek yesterday. I did. Like I said, Mom of the Year. Bringing it to ya.

I made it to 35 years, 9 months and 12 days without ever trying so much as a morsel of Spam. Yesterday, Mo Mommy came over to hang out and while the day away -which we do on a fairly regular basis- and she volunteered to cook dinner for the fam. Spam Sandwiches. Oh, yeah. I kid you not.

You can take the girl out of Alaska, but not the Alaska out of the girl. I hear Spam is quite the popular victuals up in the state that houses ANWR and baby seal galore clubbing… so, to honor my friend (It’s almost as much friend-love as scooping peanut butter into smaller containers- almost…!)….. I tried it. And… Well…while I might not ever try it again- it’s not as horrible as I had feared. Kind of like meat-flavored packing peanuts. If there was nothing left to eat, anywhere, ever again, I would chose Spam over eating my own children.

I might even choose it over marshmallows or jell-o. But that’s a push.