1. This was going to be all lighthearted and barely about my kids at ALL but then Lucy up and barfed all over my mom's car this morning on our way back from Target and so OBVIOUSLY I have to say something about that because DIDN'T WE JUST GET THROUGH THREE WHOLE STINKING WEEKS OF ILLNESS? We have NEVER, in the entire history of this family, had a stretch of sickness this long. And Dave hasn't gotten anything at all, which sounds pretty unfair and made me KIND of want to murder him until I remembered that A) he had a painful case of shingles five years ago at a ridiculously young age and B) before he was officially diagnosed, we convinced him that a spider had laid eggs in his neck. (Was actually shingles - not sure whether spider eggs would have been better or worse.) Also he had to go through the embarrassment of filling a Valtrex prescription at the CVS with a really hot pharmacist who probably hears “I swear I'm taking this for shingles and not genital herpes!” a thousand times a day and NEVER ACTUALLY BELIEVES IT.
Yeah, so my kid barfed and now we're all ticking time bombs too, LA DEE FRICKING DA.
2. I don't have a ton of puppy-related complaints this week (he has made huge strides lately) but I will tell you that the time it takes to tape off a 10-foot section of wall in order to paint some trim increases EXPONENTIALLY if there is a puppy awake in your general vicinity. If I could get the tape onto the wall I was golden; however, only one out of five pieces of tape that I tore off actually made it ON to the wall. The other four pieces were pounced upon and then chewed up by a dog, and what should have been a five-minute project took TWENTY. Twenty minutes to put up ten feet of tape. That was two days ago and I can't imagine how long it's going to take me to PAINT it. Before I got the tape up I cleared the area of a bookshelf and books and it took me FIVE DAYS to get everything put away. It seems like every time I start a project, no matter how small, I have so many interruptions that the small act of storing five boxes of books in the attic takes the better part of a morning, what with the letting a dog out for six false-alarm pees, and getting Lucy a snack and helping her tear a page out of her coloring book (my kids are SO ABOVE coloring pages while they're STILL INSIDE the book) and answering the door for the heat repair guy and HEY, look at that, it's NOON ALREADY soooo... I guess... let's break for lunch? We can put boxes in the attic this AFTERNOON or something.
3. I turned 35 a couple of weeks ago and since then I have found at least five gray hairs. I tell you this with complete honesty: it isn't so much the gray hairs that bother me so much as the fact that eventually I will probably want to COVER them if they continue to multiply and I STILL have PTSD from my horrific hair-dye experience last year. I cannot IMAGINE a time when I will willingly apply hair dye to my head again, whether by my own hand or someone else's, and yet, I know that time will come and I am DREADING IT. Dreading the thought of choosing a color myself (Lord help me, I've proven that I'm not able to do that) and dreading the thought of trusting someone else to choose and apply it for me. And I could be years away from gray hair actually BOTHERING me, I realize. I just... I JUST DON'T KNOW IF THAT'S ENOUGH TIME.
4. Books I have read since the beginning of 2013 and would recommend: The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes. Wild, by Cheryl Strayed. Books I have read since the beginning of 2013 and thought the lead character was too annoying to make me want to recommend it to someone else: Brand New Human Being, by Emily Jeanne Miller. Books I have returned to the library because I just didn't care to finish them: Seating Arrangements, by Maggie Shipstead. Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, by Anna Quindlen. (May check it out again – just couldn't get into it this time around.) Books currently in the queue: Happier at Home, by Gretchen Rubin. Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver. (I'm going to try to keep up with my reading list here, since so many of you ask/email about it.)
5. I am in love with a particular candle sold at Target. Its this Lemon Verbena soy candle and it costs $7.69 and I have been putting off buying one for something like eight months. EIGHT MONTHS. Why, I ask you, is it fine for me to randomly spend $20 on clearance t-shirts for boys or to throw a $6 nail polish in my cart, but SO DIFFICULT to commit to buying a $7 candle? I walk by this stupid candle nine times a month, pick it up, smell it, AND PUT IT BACK. Why? WHY? It makes no sense. In my last two trips to Target I've bought two $6 clearance belts and three $3 coin purses, a grand total of TWENTY-ONE DOLLARS, also known as THREE CANDLES. Why can't I just DO IT? I love burning candles and the only ones I've let myself buy in the last six months have been cheapy Glade ones in holiday scents. They were fine, did the job or whatever, but never made me TRULY HAPPY. Today I finally pulled the trigger and bought the stupid $7 Lemon Verbena, and you guys. It felt SO GOOD and it's been burning in the kitchen since I got home and my house smells like old school wood-polishing Pledge and reminds me of my childhood (I think) and I am SO HAPPY ABOUT IT. Also feel a little smug because I almost bought the big three-wick tin candle ($3 more) but went with the $7.69 jar candle instead, and then on a whim, checked the bottoms to see that the three-wick candle only burns for 20 hours while they jar candle burns for FIFTY. (Smug!)
(Tapping out at five quick takes today. Must return to Barfy Preschooler watching her 85th consecutive episode of Wonder Pets. She had Sprite for the first time this afternoon and wept when I said I only had one can. OH THE MISERY OF BEING FOUR.)
