Is that a banana in your pocket?

This is a banana bunker. It's supposed to keep your banana from getting mashed in your lunch box.

No, really.

If you have to have one, you can order it here.

My New Favorite Bumper Sticker

"Come to the dark side. We have cookies."

Are you really this desperate?

I've been a full-blown vegetarian for more than 10 years now. People ask me why I chose this path and depending on the situation, my answer can be rather complex.

I think I have found a better way to describe it:

Because you people have now resorted to eating cat food.

Please pass the broccoli.

I'll leave the light on for you.

Any of you suffer from insomnia? I go through bouts of it - having an episode tonight. Most of the time I start off sleeping, get into bed, start to doze off, maybe even actually sleep for an hour or so and then suddenly I'm awake and I can't go back to sleep. My mind races over and over about the same old things- usually about money. I get itchy and restless, I have this weird sensation that the outside of my skin is a different temperature than the inside layers of my skin.

Tonight, my mind was freaking out about how I am going to pay the school deposits for both the Pickle and the Pepper next year... in February. Yes, more than nine months away. Now you understand the lunacy of my insomnia.

Different things work at different times. Deep breathing, stretching, yoga, meditation. Tonight my brain was way too wired for that. So I got up and made a list. Then I started picking up and de-cluttering. I may even resort to balancing my checkbook, I'm that desperate.

After an hour of cleaning up, I walked away because clearly that wasn't helping me go back to sleep.

So now I'm here. Playing catch up a little with you so that maybe my inner task-master hamster will be assuaged (how 'bout that word at 1:23am?!?!), get off her little spinning wheel and nest down into some soft bedding for the night.

We went camping over Memorial Day weekend in western Maryland. Great time- a bit chilly the first two nights and a couple of whippoorwills staying up all night playing "Marco Polo", but other than that...Pepper was so exhausted at the end of each day she slept and slept and slept. We were camping with a group from our church so Pickle had a few of her friends to keep her company. We marveled at how she handled and enjoyed a bit of freedom as she and her friends hung out around the campsite in their own little pack instead of looking to the parents to keep them entertained.

Yes, I did actually go see Duran Duran. The first couple of songs they played were from their latest album and they were fine but once they started playing the classics ("Hungry Like the Wolf" was the first), it was like they were still 25 and I was still in junior high school cutting out pictures of Simon and taping them to my room like a giant decoupage project and holding my tape recorder next to the radio, my finger poised over the "record" button in case they played my request. So much fun. And a surprising number of twenty-somethings there. I'm horrified to think that the reason they were at the concert was probably because they grew up listening to Duran Duran as their parents played it.

Here's how I know my life is actually a sitcom: The other morning as me and the girls are in our typical rush to get out the door for school/daycare/work, I get everyone in the car when the Pickle announces she hasn't eaten breakfast. She's been having trouble waking up as of late and she hasn't wanted breakfast first thing so that day it just sort of got lost in the shuffle.

I ran back into the house to get her a small bowl of Koala Crisp (the organic version of Cocoa Crispies) cereal sans milk, which luckily is how she prefers it. I turn around to take the box back to the cupboard when I misjudge how high I have it above the counter and the box grazes the top of the bowl sending it sliding off the counter. Amazingly, I reach back just in time to catch the bowl and none of the four billion little pieces spill out.

Feeling pretty proud of myself having averted the disaster and showing some finesse in the rescue, I have a little extra spring in my step, which serves to bounce me right off the glass when I walk straight into the closed sliding door. Those four billion pieces scattered everywhere in what I like to call an ad hoc scavenger hunt for the dogs.

Nice huh. What I lack in grace I make up in showmanship, that's for sure. All I need is a laugh track and I could be the next Julia Louise Dryfuss.

Well, folks, I think it may actually be time for me to try that whole sleep thing again. I'm probably not going to edit this post given the time, so you'll forgive me if it's a bit incoherent in the morning.

And if I wake up those of you with Blackberries by the bedside then it's your own fault for signing up for the RSS feed. But you can go back to sleep now. This has all just been a dream.

Is There Something I Should Say?

Hi.

I've been thinking about you.

I have lots to share, just no time to share it.  But I promise, I'm coming up for air in the next week when the end of school and all that it encompasses comes to pass on Friday.

Meanwhile I'm busy making aromatherapy stress-releasing wraps for all of Pickle's teachers.

The irony is not lost on me.

I promise, I'll be back soon and you'll be reveling in the stories about the minutia of my life.  

Lucky you.

Not the least of which was attending an event that I've waited twenty-three years for.  I'll give you a hint:

See you soon!

Random Friday Musings

• Robins are building nests in the tangle of thorny bushes that edge the parking lot near my window. I keep going outside and cutting strings from the weed guard poking out from the rocks because I hate to see the birds spend so much time pulling on it like worms from the ground but with so little success. I don't really think they appreciate how much easier I've been making their lives. Birds are self-absorbed like that.
  
  


• The Pickle has her first loose tooth. She flits between being over-the-top excited about this milestone and trying not to go over the falls in a panic becuase when the tooth falls out there may be the tiniest bit of....BLOOD!!!!!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

She's informed us that she wants us to start packing extra-crunchy fruit in her lunch so that her tooth will fall out, but not bananas. Not because they are squishy but because one of her friends lost a tooth biting into a banana and it then tasted just...like...BLOOD!!!!!! Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!

Biting into a banana? Really? I think it's just as likely that the tooth saw the banana coming and jumped out onto it.

• Do you read the blog "I Am Bossy?" If not, you really should. I would even go so far as to say that even if you have no more time in your life to read even one more blog then you should stop reading my blog you lame-o and for God's sake go catch up with Bossy's life. http://www.iambossy.com/
  
  


• And for that someone special in your life - the best gift ever.

You can thank me later.

Emotional Junk Food

I’ve been working on the concept of happiness lately. For many, many years I viewed myself as the president of the Optimist’s club- if there were such a thing as president, but if I were president, I would probably make everyone co-presidents right along with me because, hey, we’re all optimists here, so since we can all see things in the most positive of ways, we can all work together, right?

As a side note, for those of you who wouldn’t even step foot in a room where you might be mistaken for an optimist, I realize how terribly annoying I could be.

But in the last couple of years, reality, or at least my perception thereof, has entered my house like a thief and kicked the optimism right out of me; threw it in a burlap bag and ran out with it to sell at some local pawn shop. Unfortunately, along with my optimism, it also took, hope, energy and a large stash of my happiness and left behind anger, despair, pessimism and loneliness. Yeah, for those of you who haven’t seen me in a while, I’m a real joy to be around these days. Finally though, I’ve started taking care of myself again and am trying to rekindle these concepts that were so much a part of who I used to be. I liked me back then. I’d like to be more of me.

So, I’ve been reading books about happiness, worked on shifting my perceptions and my thoughts , breathed a who lot more and started asking myself better questions- like instead of “Why is this so f***ked up,” I might say, “Is there a way to consider this differently?” Of course this is a process and a relearning of sorts, so often times the question is ‘Is there a way to consider this F**ked up shit differently?” It’s a start.

I’ve also recently started looking at how I spend my time now versus how I used to spend my time. It’s kind of like those magazine articles that promise you’ll lose ten easy pounds and then reminds you of things like, “use mustard instead of mayo on your sandwich” or “brew your own cup of green tea at home instead of spending $10 and 3500 calories on your half-caff. double espresso vanilla latte.” I realize how much I indulge in “emotional junk food”- things that give me a quick fix of…something. I would say joy exactly, but these things work as a salve, or as a numbing mechanism- which in the absence of joy is sometimes all we’ve got.

Here they are in no particular order:

1) Junk food- Now it’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I love me some French fries in a way that’s almost unnatural. Unfortunately, they’ve become a staple- so has soda –which I only drank occasionally for years and never kept in the house and there has been a decided lack of vegetables in my diet- unfortunate for a vegetarian. Time to stop buying processed foods and sugar laden beverages. I see a refrigerator exorcism coming into my life very soon.

2) Lack of exercise- Lots of excuses for this one, none of them particularly legitimate. I’m the heaviest I’ve been except when I was pregnant. One of my difficulties is that I often have an all or nothing approach to exercise- either I’m working out at peak intensity for the maximum time every day or I’m doing nothing at all. My plan for this one is to bring workout clothes to work and change into them when I am leaving – I have about 45 minutes between getting out of work and picking up the Pickle and then Pepper. I should use it for something more than errands or crossword puzzles.

3) Lack of sleep- Pepper and Pickle are not champion sleepers. Knowing this, one might accommodate by going to bed earlier so extra sleep can be banked when needed. I, however, choose to stay up and watch reruns of Two and a Half Men and Sex in the City to see if that might work instead. Yeah, it doesn’t.

4) TV- I love tv. Love it. I’ll never be able to turn it off completely, but I am actively working to cut back. I get stuck when the Pepper refuses to go to bed and she and I head downstairs to the playroom. There’s no hope for me then. (I have however, cancelled one newspaper and actively try and avoid the news -on tv, online and in print - I can't emotionally take it anymore).

5) Computer- I spend a ridiculous amount of time playing meaningless games online. It started out as something to do when Pepper was nursing and I couldn’t use two hands to catch up on emails. But it goes way beyond that now. I have a problem. At least it’s not Evercrack.

6) Lack of quiet/ reflection time. (See numbers 4 and 5 above.)

7) Time for myself. This is the one I am able to actively do the least about. The Land Baron is working ungodly hours usually six days a week right now and a babysitter on a consistent basis is financially out of the question. But I am looking into alternatives. It’s exhausting to have to do so much just to poach a little time for myself, especially when I am already exhausted and burned out. All the moms reading this are nodding in agreement right now, btw.

Ok, I could go on, but everything basically falls into these categories. Hmmm- wonder why happiness is so elusive these days? But, like a cluttered house, I am unearthing a little bit of each of these every day. My hope is that eventually it’ll be like snow falling on a branch. One flake at a time doesn’t affect much, but at some point the accumulation will cause the branch to break.

Thanks for reading, or skimming or just getting to the bottom of the page. My plan for posting this is mostly just a reaffirmation of what’s been going on in my mind. By putting it out there to all of you, it raises the stakes for me to keep pursuing these things and not go back to the methods that don’t work and zap my soul away. I’ll keep you posted.