Aw, Shucks

[slinks in, unnoticed]

Well, hello there?  Remember me?  School is over, and I am back!

[waves arms in air]

[shakes everything about a bit]

Woot, woot!

[lowers arms]

[adjust everything back into its proper place]

[looks around, a bit embarrassed]

Well, yes.  So, I am back.  And, I must say, I have been welcomed back in style.  Today in my mail box, I found this.

[trumpet fan fair]

My very first (and quite probably and quite rightly my very last) fan letter.

[trumpet fan fair]

That's right (giddy squeak).  Mail.  I love mail.  From a fan.  I love fans.  I have fans! 

[blushes]

[steps away to answer knock at door from disgruntled neighbor asking to silence the trumpets as her cockatoo is sleeping]

[apologizes, blushes again, sends regards to cockatoo]

This wasn't just a "keep up the good work, we love you" fan letter either.  It had a gift card in it.  A Starbucks gift card.

[holds card, Vanna White style, caresses the air around it]

Isn't that the sweetest thing ever? 

This fan was anonymous, but not in a peering through my front hedge sort of way. They wrote, "It's given anonymously so you'll realize what a big fan base you have!"

[sniffles a little, wipes eyes]

[regains senses]

Yes, I know this is ridiculous.  An anonymous card could mean that I have exactly one fan and she's my mother.  A card signed by Michelle Obama or the newly princessed Kate Middleton would mean I have a big fan base.

[thinks a bit more on this]

Then again, Mrs. Obama and the Princess do not have my home address, so even if they were fans of mine, which, let's face it, they very well could be, they have no way of actually getting the card in my caffeinated hands.

[realizes mid-level greatness]

[sits up a little straighter at keyboard]

Michelle, Kate, don't worry.  Just e-mail me.  And, if you are ever in town, the coffee is on me.

[notes foul odor wafting from kitchen]

[reminded must do dishes]

[swells with thankfulness for what she has]

To YOU, who sent my very first fan letter, thank you.  It meant even more than the Starbucks card.  (But you can't have it back or anything.)

I've missed everybody, and I will be back soon.  Promise.

[secretly worries that such a promise won't be kept due to tragic death in fiery crash]

[makes note to e-mail blogger password to friend so fans can be notified, mourn, get closure]

[relieved to remember that local Starbucks has double doors, plenty of room for swelling head]

The Down Side

One of the down sides of homeschooling?  No one helped my children make cute Mother's Day gifts out of their hand prints.  Well, not this year, anyway.

Another down side?  Very little time to go blog crawling, and leave comments for all of my favorite people.  And,  absolutely no time to write.  I did manage to post every day for two weeks, about two weeks ago.  I guess I wore myself out.  That, and school ends in exactly 7.25 school days.  I need to make sure that all my T-crossing, I-dotting ducks are in a row.  I wouldn't want to repeat Kindergarten on a technicality.

And, I went out of town the weekend before Mother's Day, and am only now catching up with the housework that was un-done while I was gone.

Oh, and did I mention that I am reading a book.  An adult book.  Ooh, wait.  That connotes something I don't mean.  A book for adults?  Well, I'm sure you get the idea.  A book with lots of words and no pictures -- NOT for kindergarteners.  I've sorta been using my spare time for that.  So, maybe it is not all because of school. 

But, whatever.  I'll be back when school gets out.  Or when I finish my book.  Or when I have something to say and the time to say it.  Whichever comes first.  Has anyone even missed me?

The nature of this post brought to you by my allergy medication. 

The Momarazzi

We are moms.

We are moms who blog.

We will stop at nothing to get the picture.

We may be bad parents.

We are the momarazzi.

The Week in...

This is usually where The Week in Kids post goes.  But, there has been other stuff this week too.  And the kids have kept me so busy, I forgot to pay attention and take notes for you all.  So, we are going to lump all of this week's news in together.  Consider it a bloggy austerity measure.

I will start with the kids though.

This week in kids...

Jonah and Cate made up a new game.  It is called "ride."  Cate says, "Ride, ride."  Jonah sits on the couch.  Cate climbs on his back.  Jonah stands up.  And away they go.

If you think this can only end badly, you would be wrong more often than not.  As a mother, I was apprehensive at first, but they seemed to be having such a good time together (together is big), that I decided to stand back, and watch closely.  The picture is actually one of their very first attempts.  Jonah is much better at it now, with practice.  He reaches around and holds her up well, and she hangs on without strangling him.  The biggest problem is when Sam wants to play his new game called "push."

Also this week in kids...

Cate met her inner mommy.  If you don't recognize this set up, it is a changing pad, a diaper, and wipes.  Oh, and a "baby."

First, the wipes.

Then, the diaper.

Then, the little mommy shows off her dry and happy baby.

"Who you callin' happy?"

Also, this week in Christmas...

The kids really, really wanted to decorate for Christmas.  I could have gotten out all of the decorations and put them up.  But, then they would have been bored.  Instead.  We have done one thing every day.

First, we made a paper chain, for counting off the days until Christmas.  A fancier name is an Advent Calendar, but we aren't fancy.  You can sort of see it along the top of the stockings in one of the following pictures.

Next, I put up the tree with lights.  The next day, came the ornaments.  And, threats of severe harm, up to, and including death, to any child who dare touch said ornaments.

Then the stockings.  Aren't they lovely?  That is a happy mantel.

One day, I cut out stars and had the boys each decorate one with glitter.  I then glued them together so that they would fit nicely on top of the tree.  This is Jonah's side.

At some point, the talking Homer-Santa was put out.  I'm sorry the picture is so bad, but honestly, the best part about the talking Homer-Santa, is the talking.

He moves up and down, grunts a little, as he is stuck in the chimney,  and says things like, "Oh, great!  The one night I don't have a pocket full of bacon grease."

We also made ginger bread cookies, of which no evidence remains.  Funny that.

Next week, I will put out my beautiful nativity scene.  My mother in law gave me the first pieces, and my mother gave me a few more pieces later.  I love it.  But I need to prepare a place for it, as it break, threats of harm and death aside.

Also, this week in Betsy...

Betsy, my bloggy friend, from My Five Men, was kind (of awesome) enough to send me some of her famous(ly delicious) cookies.  They were chocolate with chocolate and did I mention the chocolate.  A half dozen of the most scrumptious cookies, arrived in a tidy box, with packing poopies and everything.  The cookies themselves were separated by hand cut doilies and wrapped in cellophane, with a hand tied bow.  The whole thing sounds lovely, doesn't it?  All I have left is the note.  (Don't judge me.)

Well, that is all for now.  I will try to take better notes next week.  Darn my kids, they are growing up so fast, they haven't done anything clever all week.  They just don't care that I have a blog to write.

See you next week!

Happy Anniversary to Me

This is it.  My first anniversary as a blogger.  One year, 202 posts, 5,500 visitors. Yay, me!

I feel like I have been at this long enough now to say, I hate the word "blogger."  It is an ugly word, a silly word, a frivolous word, that undermines who we are and the work that we do.  Well, the work that some people do.  My work, is, in fact, quite frivolous, by design.  That, in no way, changes the fact that I hate the word "blogger."  I think I will devote the next year to coming up with a better one.  Please e-mail me any and all suggestions.

I will also buy myself a copy of Strunk and White's Elements of Style.  I will exercises the proper use of the ellipses, which may not be easy for a girl who had to structure this sentence in such a way as to avoid the the plural of the word "ellipses," because she could not figure out how to spell it.  I will abandon creative punctuation, and stop flipping a coin to choose between a colon and a semi-colon.  Or using a comma, simply as a pause for breath.  I may still start a new paragraph whenever I feel like the one I am writing is just too long to look at. It's an aesthetic thing.

For now though, I thought I would celebrate this milestone, by looking back at some of my favorite posts, in no particular order.  No, really, the drum roll will not be necessary.

A Proposal Story

An Agatha Tracey Mystery

Toast O. E. and the Toddler Menace

Twilight Schmilight

The Saga of the Uppity Bath Towel

Of Marriage and Breakfast

(Not New) Delhi and My Date with a Pregnant Woman

What I Cherish

Ancient History, Bag Boy Style

The True Meaning of Christmas?

The World is Run By Stupid People

These are the ones I had the most fun writing.  But, the best and most important thing I have ever written, did not originate as a blog post.  It is the Eulogy I wrote for my grandmother.  I posted it here last November in honor of the anniversary of her death.

I have really enjoyed writing about our little life here.  And, you, my readers, have all been so kind.

THANK YOU ALL for coming this last year!
And please keep coming!  Please!
(Does that sound too needy?)

Blogger on a Mission

First, I hate the word "blogger." It is ugly, but it is ubiquitous, and there does not seem to be any reasonable alternative.  Writer of instantly published internet media?  Bahh.  I call other bloggers "writers" unless doing so would not make my meaning clear. 

Anyway...

I mention it because my anniversary as a blogger is approaching.  My bloggiversary, if you will.  (Shudder)  It is on October 26 to be exact, and I am on a bit of a mission to write two hundred posts by then.  So, if you have noticed a little extra activity here at uno, dos, tracey, that is why. 

I appreciate you, my readers slogging through it all.  I hope the quality hasn't suffered.  The end is near.  And, then I may just collapse into a heap, (blogger's cramp), and not write another thing until the new year.

My First Award

I won.  An award.  For my blog.  THIS blog.  It is true.  Yipee!

This is the Honest Scrap Award.  Yes, at first I thought it was the Honest Crap Award too, but it is not.  This is for real.  The Honest Scrap Award is "for bloggers who put their heart on display as they write from the depths of their soul."  I would like to humbly (yes, a stretch, I know) thank Kate over at Calamity, Kids, and Other Stuff for passing it to me.  She really is full of heart and soul, that one.  No, seriously.  Go over and check her out.  But not yet.  I have Honest Scrap business to attend to.

You see, with awards come obligations.  I am to pass the award on to another worthy blogger, which I do at the end, and I am supposed to write ten honest things about (my favorite subject) me.  Note, it says honest.  I had to  break a sweat, but this is my list.

1.  I had twenty-one paying jobs between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five.  Some were concurrent.

2.  I have lived in twenty-five different houses/apartments in eight different towns.  Eighteen of those houses and five of those towns have been since adulthood.

3.  I am really good at trivia games.  Scary good.  But I have never been able to beat my mother at Scrabble.  I am waiting for her to get old and lose her mind.

4.  There are at least a dozen people who knew me, before I knew Jesus, who would tell you I am a psychotic bitch, and in all fairness to them, from their perspective, I am.  Or, rather, was.  That was life BC.  I'm different now.

5.  I love television.  I don't mean that I love watching television , I just love the medium, its potential for telling a story.  It is a great way to tell a really long story in short bits, that a movie can not do.  Yes, it is true that so much on television these days is, as we call it around here, "carp, that troublesome fish."  Reality TV is CARP, that troublesome fish.  Cable news is CARP, that troublesome fish.  But if you are going to do something like the show Lost, TV is the only way.  I love Lost.  Maybe that should be it's own number.

6.  I wish I were a red head.

7.  I would love to write for television.  In high school, I took an aptitude test that said I would be best suited as a teacher, lawyer, or television producer.   I have been a teacher.  I have been a lawyer.  I am just sitting at home, waiting for my career as a TV producer to take off.  If I'm producing, I will hire myself to write as well.  You see, it is a brilliant plan.

8.  I wish I could time travel.  But, only into the past and only me.  If everyone could do it, it would get too complicated.

9.  There are no photos of 40-year-old me on Facebook, or anywhere else, standing around in a bar, with blood shot eyes, wearing a low-cut, too tight dress, surrounded by similarly aged and clad women, holding up a shot glass of an eighty proof liquid, desperately pretending it is the best time I've ever had, and for this, I can honestly say, I am quite blessed.  Because there, but for the grace of God, and a husband who has not left me, go I.

10. My children are feral.

Now, for the BEST part.  I get to pass the award on to someone else.  I know so many awesome bloggers, but I am going to limit myself to two. 

Drum Roll Please.....

The Honest Scrap Award is getting passed to Susie at Laundry Woes, and Carolyn at Fruit of the Carolyn.

Congratulations ladies!  I love your blogs.  They inspire me, and now my readers can be inspired by you as well.  (I hope your ISP can handle all the traffic.)

All the Yiddish I know...

This is my 100th post.  Five months, and one hundred posts into this crazy idea of Hubband's, I think blogging has made me a better person.  Seriously.

First, it has given me an outlet for all the grown-up things that rattle around in my head.  I love my children, but they just don't get me.  And, at their ages, I really would not want them to.

Second, it has made me live my life more fully and with more attention to detail, because I never know where great blogging material will come from.  (Unless I go anywhere with my friend Jennifer, in which case she will spoon feed it to me and then tell me I am brilliant.)

Third, because blogging has changed my life in the two previously mentioned ways, I have had to make time for writing and living, leaving less time for housework, which is just as well because I was taking it too seriously.  Now I have made it my goal to lower the bar for housewives everywhere.  (More on that in another post.)

Fourth, blogging has made use of something about myself that I always knew, but until now, never appreciated.

I'm a kvetch.

In case you don't know, kvetch is a Yiddish word that means "a complainer".  I wanted to say that I "like to kvetch," but once I started to write this post, I realized that all the Yiddish I know, I learned from the Dick Van Dyke Show, and that perhaps I should look it up, so as not to embarrass myself.  Well, according to Yiddish Dictionary On-line, kvetch is a noun.  It has a verb form, kvetchn, but I am not sure how to use it.  I have heard it used several times in the way that I want to use it, but I am not sure that it is correct, so I won't use it that way.  For now.  I wonder if there is a Yiddish word for tangent.  Anyhoo...

The other day I posted a story about the breakfast dishes.  It was riveting, I assure you.  In it, I implied that I have been so busy doing dishes, raising kids, etc. that I have not had the time to look up and even notice my life, let alone enjoy it.  Well, Vince, a frequent commenter, called me on it.

He said, "You seem to be saying that the business of marriage and breeding over the last 6 years had kept you so busy that you did not see the pure fun of what you had created. But then I realised the why of reading your blog IS that joy you have. And while you might be grinding your teeth while the lawyer is scraping poop from the walls you are mostly on a cloud of delight."

While I would never use the phrase "cloud of delight" to describe anything that was not edible, I have to admit, he has a point.  I love it when my life stinks.  I love it when things go horribly wrong (so long as no permanent damage is done).  Why?  Because there is good material in there, and I am a kvetch.

There are people, like my friend and fellow blogger, Jordan who can always see the bright side (even when she has to bathe in cold water at six o'clock on a Sunday morning) and when there is no obvious bright side, she makes one.  This is not as obnoxious as it sounds.  She is a genuine delight, really.  I love this about her.  But, that is not me.  I'm a kvetch.

But, I am a happy kvetch.  I actually like complaining.  I like looking at the darker side of things, and lightening them up, by making them funny.   There is nothing ugly about this, or even all that negative.  Kvetching (if I may be so bold as to make a verb and then a gerund out of a Yiddish noun), and all the things in the world worth kvetching about, bring me joy.  Great joy.

Does this make me a bad person?  Maybe.  But, it makes me a better blogger, and blogging makes me a better person (see above).  Or, maybe blogging just makes me a better kvetch, which makes me a better blogger which makes me a better person.  Oh, I'm dizzy.

 This is clearly 'kvetch' being uses as a verb.  

And, the guy who wrote this book probably knows what he is talking about.  

I feel better now.

Thank you all for coming.  I hope you will be here for 100 more.