Monday, July 21, 2008

Jail: Where the Cons Outweigh the Pros

As the summer at home with the kids in the &*#@#! non-stop rain drones on, I've found myself pondering upon a nice little mama vacation.

Don't get me wrong. We're having fun with trips to the library, walks around town, visiting festivals, having play dates and so on. It's just that after two years of surprising mutual respect and caring, my darling children have now officially learned how to push each other's buttons, which means there are predictable small explosions of fury and screaming occurring frequently throughout the day and my last nerve is wearing a little thin. My mom and dad laugh about this. What goes around comes around. Only 43 days until school starts.

Also in the No-Fun Category: the rain. It, too, was predictable. You can't very well escape the Winter of 10,000 Feet of Snow and expect an immediate shutting off of the precipitation faucet come Spring. Apparently these things take time and, lo, we now have the Lovely Wet Summer of Bugs, which means we're cooped up a little more than I would like to be.

And, we can't forget that even when we get away from it all, we don't really get away from it all. People must still be tended. And their laundry. And their dishes. And their fishing rods. Etc.

So maybe mama needs a solo holiday in order to recharge. On the grocery list on the fridge I requested a 10-day spa holiday. I'm thinking we're unlikely to find that in aisle seven.


The other day I heard myself saying to someone, with only a bit of sarcasm, that in jail the prisoners get three square meals a day and someone does their laundry. Of course the cons of going to jail outweigh the pros. (Snort! Guffaw! Cons - get it?) I think I'll do my level best to avoid jail. I'd probably end up on laundry or kitchen duty anyway.

My cyber friend Andrea just returned from a fabulous visit to the BlogHer conference in San Francisco. It sounds as if it was loads o' fun. She posted a picture of her beautiful hotel room on her blog at BabyCenter. Biiiiiiiiiiig siiiiiiiiiigh!! (The green I chose for that link is a metaphor for my thinly disguised jealousy. Did you catch it?)

This mama's gotta get me a few days away. Not in jail, though.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

I Can Hear Them Whispering....

Mama knows they are there.

We thought we might have the opportunity to make s'mores when we went to a cottage for a few days last week. You know, melted chocolate squares and roasted marshmallows smushed between graham crackers? Yum.


We didn't make the s'mores, but we had all the ingredients. We brought them home. They are in the cupboard. Downstairs there are two extra big Jersey Milk chocolate bars. I can hear them calling me.

And then I think of the charming photos of me in my bathing suit on the dock, which I will not be posting here, and I remember why I must not eat those chocolate bars.

If you need me, I'll be quietly weeping and sighing.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Overheard on a Dock at an Undisclosed Location

We just returned from a mini holiday at a lovely cottage on a lake.

Sigh!

While fishing one evening with Boychild on the dock, Mama observed some aquatic movement, which was remarkable because for the first two days we were starting to think perhaps there were no fish in the lake. Prior to the following discussion, we had figured out the fish du jour (largemouth bass) preferred to receive their worms close to the lake bottom, so we finally started catching and releasing them. No more wussy bobbers for these fishing folk.


Mama: "Hey! I just saw a whole school of fish swim by - way down deep!"

Boychild, after a short pause: "I think they must be at least high school, but probably university fish."

Mama, considering: "Oh, you mean because of their size?"

Boychild: "Yes." A pause. "And the minnows would be the Kindergarten fish."

Mama: "Of course."


Kids are awesome.