Electronic Family - Driving in Ice

I don't like driving in the ice and snow.  Actually, don't like is such a pale word to describe how terrified I am when faced with driving and snow and/or ice.
This phobia is well known in my family.  And as the only one in my family who fears snow and ice, I am roundly made fun of every time there are one or two flakes lazily floating down to the earth.

So on Monday I was less than thrilled with the weather.  We waited until the sun came up and then scraped off the car.  

Here is a text between Mary and I:

Me: The government is delayed for 2 hours.  We are figuring out if dad is going to drive himself to the metro or not.

Mary:  Alrighty.

Later....

Me:  Are you going in late?

Mary: Getting ready now. Lance is de-icing my car.

Much Later....

Me:  Oh did I say that I was taking dad to the metro?  By that I mean that dad is driving to the metro and I am in the passenger seat in a fetal position hiding my face and crying because i have to drive home.

Mary: LOL.

Yep. No respect.

Electronic Family

Larry ran into Wegman's the other night to pick up some sudafed.  He handed over his driver's license and was unpleasantly surprised to hear that he had exceeded his monthly limit.  Especially since he hadn't bought any sudafed this month...

As we told Audrey about it at lunch, we told her we were going home and calling the store to make sure that they were correct because we didn't want to think that someone else was using Larry's ID.

Me:  Good news!  It was a mistake at Wegman's!!! Dad is NOT a methhead!!!

Audrey:  A mistake at Wegman's?

Me: Re his attempt to purchase Sudafed last night.

Audrey:  Ohhhhhh! I read that as "meathead" not "methhead"

Me:  Important difference.....

I guess Audrey was distracted.....

elf on the shelf

Last week my neighbor Jeni posted this Elf on the Shelf calendar to help to remind herself to move her Elf around.

I immediately went into spasms.  Of terror.  Of guilt.  All those feelings that parents get when they realize that they forgot to do something.

The calendar of guilt......

This is my response:

• Kim Turner So glad that we didn't do this. I can see it now - about 12/14 the kids would get an official letter stating that their elf had fallen off the Wagon (again) and would be spending the rest of the holidays at Betty Ford....

  November 16 at 2:00pm via mobile · Like · 1
• 
  

Except that I don't think that we would've lasted until Dec 14th.  Certainly our Elf would've had a tragic beagle or cat or even ferret related accident well before he had a chance to break into the good Scotch.

As a parent consistency was not my strong point.  I mean the kids were clean and fed and clothed and schooled and put to bed at regular intervals, but perhaps the bed and fed and schooled times varied.

And at Christmas, Larry would always put up the tree - if he was there.  And he would always take down the tree - if he was there.  (One year during Desert Storm, the tree stayed up well into late January when I finally took it down and dumped all the ornaments into a big basket where they stayed in the corner until Larry got home sometime in March.)  Single parenting is a bitch....

We do have a couple of traditions that we try to hold onto year after year:

1)  We have a nice catered Italian meal every Christmas Eve.  I.E. we order out pizza.  It started when Larry seemed to be gone a lot around Christmas time and it helped set the tone for the evening. We eat pizza while we watch Gremlins. (The girls have added the alcohol in the last few years.)

2)  I make a massive breakfast after we open presents - and the last 20 years or so I've been making "Breakfast Bowls"  a dish that I've unashamedly stolen from Bob Evans.  It is also called "heart attack in a bowl" by my children, but I don't recall anyone turning away from them.

And maybe the one thing that we all remember -

3)  Our own personal Elf.  My mom brought it back from Germany in the late 50's.  And every year it gets just a bit more raggedy.  We finally resorted to placing on a limb of the tree near the trunk because it is too fragile to hang.  And placing it was always Joshua's job.  He did it at the very end, just before Mary put the angel on the top of the tree.

(We lost it for a couple of years.  While it was gone, my friend Lyndy picked up a bunch of elves at yard sales for us and it helped a lot, but when we found that stray box in the attic with our elf in it, we all breathed a sigh of relief.)

My elf is on the right.  He appears to be cozy-ing up to a newbie on his left......

Maybe my kids will do Elf on the Shelf when they have kids.

I hope that they do that and eat pizza and have big breakfasts and pick a special child to put their elf on the tree.

Maybe I'll even let them borrow mom's elf.....

As long as I get it back.

It's the Little Things

We had had a super busy couple of days - 

Thursday was Halloween and Friday was Shayne's surgery and then we had the kids afterwards and we were up early on Saturday so that we could get the kids home and get to Silver Spring to see Jesus Christ Superstar.

By the time we got home Saturday night we were dead tired.

We stayed up for a couple of hours with Lucy and Ellie then staggered upstairs.

I was eating some yogurt and asked Larry if he wanted to finish it.  "Sure", he said, "what kind?"

Without hesitation I replied "Potato."

He didn't even flinch as I handed him the pumpkin yogurt.

Which begs the question -

Exactly who was the most tired???

A Very Scary Five Minutes

Monday I was out running errands.
I was listening to WTOP (as per usual) when they broke with the story about the school shooting in Nevada.
As you know, I have a niece and nephew who are students in Nevada.
WTOP did not mention the location of the shooting, so I was a little concerned as I went into the last store on my list.  It was just a run in and run out kind of a trip so i just grabbed my credit card and left every thing else in the car.
When I got back to the car about ten minutes later, there was a missed call on my cell phone.
It had a Nevada area code, but it was an unfamiliar number.
My heart skipped several beats.
I called the number back but all I got was an generic voice mail recording.
I called my sister-in-law, but got HER voice mail.
I called my brother, but got a text saying that he was busy and would call me back.
I was having a little trouble breathing.
Then WTOP broke back in and said that the school was near Reno.  As relieved as I was about it not being "my" students, I felt so sad for the school near Reno.
I got back home and turned on TV and sure enough, Grey's Anatomy was doing a show about a school shooting.  Oh no.
My brother called me back - his was the unknown number - his new work cell phone. He couldn't believe the timing of it all - he wasn't even in Nevada and wasn't aware of the shooting when he just randomly called me.
I am so heartsick about the upswing in school shootings.
It used to be that school was the safe place for your children to be.
But now it seems like there aren't any "safe" places anymore.
So hug your family close and pray for Sparks, Nevada and all the school systems and students and teachers.
And pray for a solution to all this madness.
There has to be one out there....

Good Morning World!!!

Neve woke up this morning and within five minutes was downstairs bright-eyed and chirping about cats.

Grey, however, surveyed the situation, grabbed a pop-tart and asked if he could take it back upstairs.

I, on the other hand, had staggered down the stairs two hours earlier at 6:15 AM to let the girls out and I hadn't progressed much past standing.

So I offered up donuts and bacon - it IS Saturday morning after all - and chocolate milk in fancy goblets.

 Now the house smells agreeably like bacon and coffee... 

 And I savored my first cup.

Turns out that there is a Very Important Mickey Mouse Clubhouse to watch so I need to join the chocolate milk swilling donut eating baconators.

 It is a cool crisp autumn Saturday morning....

We don't have to hurry anywhere and they are both happy to be here.

These Saturday mornings don't come by that often...

And these babies are little for so short a time...

Maybe I'll have another cup of coffee.  Sofia the First is on next....

I Want an Owl

I've decided that I want an Owl. 

I need an Owl.

I mentioned it to Audrey.  She said "And would you like to be whisked away to Hogwarts too?"

I mentioned it to my other children. Let's just say that I am sure if they keep making those faces that they are going to freeze like that.  And then where would they be?

I mentioned it to Lucy and Ellie.  They figured that if cat food is tasty - owl food could be even better!

I would've mentioned it to Larry but he is out of town at the moment.  But it's ok.  I'm sure he wouldn't mind.

Then I mentioned it to the cats.  They said "Owls??  Owls??  Baked or fried??"

Hmmmnnn....

I guess that some dreams are better left unrequited....

Owls...Yummmm....