Cords and Fleece

Shoot, I forgot to be thankful. Not that I didn’t have a good time on Thanksgiving, but I simply forgot to sit down with lowered head and folded hands to actively give thanks . That’s probably because I was sitting at the kids’ table, and between fetching more milk, picking turkey bits off the floor, and reminding Lizzy not to pick her nose and Samantha not to say “poo-poo”, it just slipped my mind. Then the rest of the evening, instead of being thankful, I found myself thinking boy, I’d like to have these floors, this kitchen, and that view . And worse, I found myself wondering what I’d sacrifice to have such a fine home. Would I wear a business suit and work in a corporate office? Wear thongs for a year? Sell dirty pictures of myself over the Internet? Not exactly in the spirit of Thanksgiving. Michael’s cousin hosted Thanksgiving at her house this year in Chicago. She and her family live in a beautifully restored older home in a great neighborhood -- tree-lined streets, well-landsca...

It rained today. To pass the time, we played with Tulip the Kitten, watched old school Sesame Street, and ate cheese burgers and Chicago-style hot dogs in a corner booth at Portillos. Grandma and Grandma arrived this afternoon. Traffic was heavy on the way to the airport. As our wipers slowly swished across the windshield, we listened to Christmas songs on the radio. Samantha asked, “Is it still Christmas?” Since the German restaurant was closed, we ate Italian for dinner. A tall, rotund man with ruddy cheeks and a small black mustache sang rich baritone songs. “OK,” I began. “This is a long shot.” “Try me,” he said. “Well, my little girl’s favorite songs are The Lonely Goat Herder and Waltzing Matilda.” “Yea, that’s a long shot.” Instead, he sang Edelweiss. Then he pulled up a chair next to Samantha and sang The Wheels on the Bus... also in rich baritone. Samantha watched with wide eyes and no smile. When he finished singing, Michael slipped Samantha a fin and asked her to give it to ...

  Lizzy and Papa, Part I: "Papa, would you like to join our pillow fight?" "I don't think that's a good idea." -------------------- Samantha and Me: "Hey guys, here's a Krispy Kreme hat! These are the hats the bakers wear." "I don’t want to wear a hat." -------------------- Lizzy and Papa, Part II: "Can I have the glue? I want to put this picture on the wall." "Well, maybe we shouldn’t use glue because then we won’t be able to get it off." "But I don’t want it to come off." "But maybe I do." "I just want to decorate your door with lots of horsies on it." -------------------- Lizzy and Me: "Can I have my second donut now?" "No. You still haven’t finished your first one. Licking the chocolate off the top doesn’t count." -------------------- Samantha and Michael: "Can I have the ketchup?" "What for?" "Because I'm cold." ---------------...

When will I learn -- you can’t trust a movie just because it’s preceded by Cinderella’s castle and a flirtatious little fairy? Michael and I saw Shrek a while ago. Cute enough. Elizabeth’s teacher (Mr. Billy) dressed as Shrek for Halloween. So we didn’t think much of letting the girls watch it when it came on TV recently. As usual, we kept an eye out for any scenes of unexpected violence and checked the girls for their reaction. Shrek cornered in a stadium? No problem. Shrek pummeling his adversaries before the townspeople? Hunky Dorey A giant, fire breathing dragon chasing Shrek and his donkey friend throughout a castle practically lighting their asses on fire? Just fine. No, the trouble began when the Princess walked through the forest and exchanged vocalizations with a beautiful blue bird. The Princess sang, the bird whistled. The Princess sang louder and the bird followed suit. Finally, the Princess unleashed her loudest caterwaul and the bird... exploded . The Princess ...

Possible quotes from Raising Arizona : "Sometimes it's a hard world for small things." "Turn to the RIGHT!" (Or, left in this case.) "It's a crazy world out there...someone ought to sell tickets... I'd buy one." "Would you buy furniture from a store called Unpainted Huffheinz?" Previous Comments  

Holy moly, I slept in until 10am today. In San Diego time that's 8am, but still. Of course the girls went to bed at midnight and I went to bed at 1am, but still . That's 8am (or 10am)! Against Michael's protestations, we've sucessfully done nothing so far today. He tried to do something -- had some crazy notion about going downtown -- but I nixed that. Instead, we spent a rather enjoyable morning going through old boxes of family memorabilia. At one point we found an old box marked "Elizabeth Weber Momentos 1983." I had to stare at it for a while before it dawned on me it wasn't our Elizabeth , but Michael's grandmother. Here are some random photos from our morning excavation.       The Punch Up Lizzy had an idea for a restaurant, The Punch Up, that serves healthy, energetic food primarily in lines and circle shapes, i.e. spaghetti and meatballs, pancakes, etc. She hired Papa to work in her kitchen making his specialty, Fruit Salad. She plans...

  It’s 9:30pm Saturday night, November 10th. I’m thinking about the week ahead of me. This week we leave for Chicago to visit the family for Thanksgiving, cram a week’s worth of work into two days, and decide if we really need to buy winter shoes for the girls or if sandals and three pairs of socks will do. (I mean, it’s only for a week...) We leave Thursday. Wednesday I have a 6am migraine scheduled. My monthly migraine always falls on a Wednesday. Usually I try to plan around it. Guests are coming in from out of town? Great, I’ll make dinner. They’re coming on Wednesday? Forget it. Better order a pizza... So with last minute packing and a migraine, I don’t think I’ll have the mental wherewithal to compose a blog entry. With that in mind, I decided to interview my future self today, so she won’t have to think so hard then. See self? I do look out for you once in a while. Thus, in the following interview, I ask the questions on 11/10 and answer them 11/14. Hi self! You must be dog...

  I’m a big fan of Daddy Daze because, well, I’m a big fan of great dads. Daddy Daze is a parenting/daddy blog I discovered on Parenting.com. I got all misty-eyed when Dave, the creator of Daddy Daze, wrote another one of his funny, heartwarming blogs about fatherhood. When I discovered he was thoughtful and open-minded , not afraid to indulge in small miracles , and makes these freaking fantastic Bento lunches for his little girl, I was hooked. And Daddy Daze is not just for daddies. Recently renovated, Daddy Daze offers parenting tips, product reviews, and (my favorite) true not-so-Hollywood stories from real dads. This week, Daddy Daze features an essay from yours truly. (Thanks, Dave!) Here’s an excerpt: The Evolution of Parenting I don’t think my brain is big enough to be a parent today. Maybe in a few hundred years. When I had a baby shower, I was grateful to receive stacks of diapers, tons of pink onesies, and a blessed tube of nipple cream. (Nipple cream? Oh yea... ) Bu...

  It's morning. As usual, everyone in our family is piled into our bed. “Daddy, I want a muffin.” That’s Elizabeth. “We don’t have any muffins.” That’s Michael. “Daddy?! I want a muffin.” “I can’t get it for you if we don’t have it.” “Please, I want a muffin!” “Elizabeth, go into the kitchen and get me an elephant.” He's so clever... “Huh?” “Go into the kitchen and get me an elephant.” “But you can’t eat an elephant.” We are, after all, talking about eating breakfast. “OK. Then go into the kitchen and bring me a nice hot spaghetti dinner.” “Well, you can have the leftovers.” Let’s see if I can help... “Lizzy, why don’t you go into the kitchen and get a big birthday cake for Daddy?” I know we don’t have that. “OK! I’ll make one,” Lizzy says and begins to climb off the bed. “But it has to be real,” says Michael. That'll show her. “Don’t forget to put candles on it!” Samantha adds. “And it has to say ‘happy birthday, daddy’ on it,” Michael adds. Because she couldn’t possibly...

Desensitize/Appreciatize: verb [trans.] To make someone appreciate a thing (music, tv show, concept, etc.) when the person does not want to initially. Revealing a thing’s positive characteristics despite resistance in order to change someone's mind. Example: I’m going to desensitize/appreciatize you into liking Jethro Tull. What else do you call it when your husband makes you encourages you to listen to hours of Jethro Tull when initially you hate flutey music because it reminds you of all those creepy spaghetti westerns you used to watch at your Grandmother’s house in the 70’s, causing you to associate flutes with loneliness and dusty cowboy boots? Then, after several months of Tull overload, one day you hear Aqualung and find yourself humming along and snapping your fingers? Exactly -- Desensitize/Appreciatize. Michael has desensitized/appreciatized me to all sorts of wonderful music. The first step is to desensitize -- to play the music over and over and over again in order to ...

"Hey, you look like those guys from TV!" "That's right!" After watching a bit of Baraka the other night (thanks to a fine suggestion from Rimarama ), Elizabeth decided to decorate her body a la the tribal peoples. If this was National Geographic, then imagine a photo of the Native Lizzy, naked down to her undies, with green stripes across her legs, geometric shapes on her feet, red dots on her stomach, and lines streaming down from her eyes to look like tears. (Only, she used red marker so it looked like bloody tears. That's my sweetheart. ) Of course Samantha wanted to go native, too, and ended up with a nice tribal “smiley face” on her back. This must be the Modern American Native -- one in which Dora undies replace loin cloths, the war cry is the theme from Barney, and body paint comes care of Crayola instead of natural pigments and guano. Coincidentally (speaking of tribal peoples), a Native American Indian visited Elizabeth’s school last week. He demon...

  Tinker Bell says: a. Golly, I hate days like this. b. Keep the little one away from me. c. Where's my f!@#ing wand? Previous Comments  

It’s late and Elizabeth should be asleep. We allow her to read stories in our bedroom to tire her eyes and rest her mind. She promises Daddy she’ll go to bed soon. The phone rings -- it’s Michael’s Dad. He and his Dad talk on the phone in the family room. “I’m hungry,” she says to me. She’s done reading. “I’ll let you have some cheese and milk, but you must promise to go to bed afterwards, OK?” “OK.” She fetches the cheese. I fetch the milk. She eats. She drinks. I wait. “I have to be quiet,” she whispers. “Why?” “So Daddy doesn’t know I’m still up.” Oh. After eating and tossing her cup loudly in the kitchen sink, she’s ready for bed. “Do you know why I ask Daddy to take me to bed every night?” she asks. “No, why?” “Because I like him.” “I like him, too. He’s a great Daddy, isn’t he?” “He’s the best Daddy. I love him this much...” Suddenly she runs from the living room all the way into the family room -- demonstrating the great distance of her love. Michael sees her and looks at her ...

We have to take our car in for repair. There’s a button. It’s not working right. We were driving home this evening after supper. The girls were jazzed from too much fruit punch and french fries. Then Michael made the fatal mistake of trying to explain that some members of our family are blood-related and some are not. Yes, I know -- foolish. (Although, I greatly admire his commitment to their education.) The first WHY fell like a small pebble down the mountainside. But I could feel the vibration of the inevitable avalanche. Then -- whooosh! -- we were covered, bombarded, crushed by a wall of WHYs. We dodged a few WHYs and knocked a few back until they overwhelmed us. Finally we had no choice. We pushed the button on the dashboard of our car -- the button below the AC and Circulation buttons. We pushed and we pushed. “Why are we blood related?” Push... “Why did your great grandma die?” Push harder... “Why is it dark in the car?” Push... it’s not working!... PUSH! We tried and tried, but...

So we’re watching Francis Ford Coppola’s production of Koyaanisqatsi with the girls the other night... (Say what?) Yes, Koyaanisqatsi . It’s a great movie to watch with kids. Loosely translated, Koyaanisqatsi means “Life Out of Balance”, so I’m sure most parents out there can relate. Here’s the Wikipedia description: Koyaanisqatsi is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio [and] consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means 'life of moral corruption and turmoil, life out of balance', and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way. Sound familiar? The girls were mesmerized. The movement. The repetition. People and objects going up and down. Fast and slow. It's strangely perfect for kids. (It’s really not...

My butt is not my own. No, each member of my family considers my butt free territory and I can hardly turn a corner or walk down the hallway without a friendly slap. And washing dishes? Or cooking? Basically that means my butt is available for bongo practice. So, we’re at the zoo last weekend. As we’re standing in line waiting for nachos, Elizabeth (who’s head naturally reaches butt-height) reached up and spanked the butt closest to her head. Except this time, it wasn’t mine -- it was the lady standing next to us. “Oh, my. I’m sorry. Elizabeth, please say you’re sorry.” The lady smiled. Lizzy chewed on a finger, embarrassed. “That’s OK,” the lady said. “I thought it was my husband.” (laughs all around) It’s good to know I’m not the only one who’s lost control of her butt. I suppose it doesn’t help that I often sing, “If you’re happy and you know it, spank my butt!” The girls happily comply. (Of course, I realize that only a mother of two toddlers could get away with that -- certainly n...

Thing One and Thing Two Lizzy has been desperate for a pet to call her own. So desperate, she began collecting garden snails and decorating their habitat (a cardboard box) with a pie tin, leaves and a stuffed snail doll. But I could not abide their wanderlust, nor their sliminess, so we reintroduced them into the wild along with a few new stories to tell their friends about girls and cats and an overabundance of pink. Then last Sunday I took Samantha to the pet store -- just to look around. I turned the corner and there, in an aquarium, were the cutest damned Hermit crabs. Their shells were painted in bright, beautiful colors. Some looked like giant lady bugs, some like eyeballs (perfect for Halloween), and some like cartoon characters. That’s when I saw him. One crab’s shell was painted to look like the character Woody from Toy Story. I took this as a sign from God since we just saw Toy Story II the night before and Elizabeth loved it. Not to mention the crabs had shells -- just lik...

Dangerous Predator of the Past? Or Prehistoric Party Girl? Elizabeth Gail Weber October 20, 2007   Previous Comments  

  It’s midnight and time to pay the price. Glowing yellow eyes, blood-stained fangs, ghoulish figures in the grocery isles. Forget the sugar highs from too many chocolate bars. Here’s the real price of Halloween fun. Day 1, 2:00am: Door opens. “Mommy, I had a bad dream...” I take Elizabeth back to bed. I can’t get back to sleep. Day 2, 4:30am: Door opens. “Mommy, can you come sit with me for a little while...” I take Samantha back to bed. I can’t get back to sleep. Day 3, 1:30am: “Wha? No...iss too early...go back to bed...” Michael is talking in his sleep. I nudge him. I think it's kind of funny, because of the irony and all. I still can’t get back to sleep. Day 4, 3:00am: “Mommy...?” I whimper, then take Elizabeth and Samantha back to bed. I can’t get back to sleep. It's starting to freak me out. Day 5, 2:30am: “It’s OK, but you have to go back to bed. No it’s still nighttime. You, too, Lizzy.” Michael is talking in his sleep. But more loudly this time. Apparently having...

Here are some moments from our Halloween. --------------------- The Grim Reeper came up to my front door. I gave him a Hershey Bar and an Almond Joy. He gave the Almond Joy back. Lesson: Want to cheat Death? Dress as an Almond Joy. -------------------- “Hi. These are my girls, Elizabeth and Samantha. I’m Melissa. This is my mom, Gail, and this is my Grandma, Molly.” “Wow, so many generations.” “Yea, and my Grandma’s mother is resting in the bedroom.” “That’s right, she doesn’t know she’s dead yet.” Dark Hutchins humor. ------------------- Elizabeth: “Grandma, I’m a genie. You can have three wishes.” Grandma: “Great! I wish for a kiss.” (smooch) Grandma: “I wish for you to run around the kitchen and come back.” (run, run, run) Grandma: “I wish for you to hug Samantha.” (hug, hug, hug) Elizabeth: “Mommy, I’m a genie. You can have three wishes.” Me: “Great. I wish for you to clean up that mess on the floor.” -------------------- Elizabeth: “Trick or Treat, smell my feet, give me some... ...

Apparently, November is "blog until you puke" month. Someone, somewhere, issued a challenge to blog once a day in November. Clearly this person is not interested in the quality of blogs, only the shear unfathomable quantity, and therefore I should refuse to participate on principle. However, I have a closet competitive streak that's rather macho in nature and just as stupid. It's what caused me to make sure I had less beer in my Heineken bottle than my husband's on our first date, even though I wasn't much of a drinker. (For example, when he took a swig, I would take two, and so on.) Despite this (or perhaps in some odd way because of it) my boyfriend eventually became my husband and we've lived happily ever after (well, most of the time). I was lucky. It's no surprise then that halfway through my day, without having yet compiled my Halloween Blog and thinking I'll just post it tomorrow (November second !), I find myself twitching in my seat. I...