Come Friends, Let us Gather Around my Fridge

My fridge is very clean right now. I hosted a rave/baby shower with some friends last night and I had a ton of stuff to get done to be ready. Bathroom to clean. Games to plan. Carpet to vacuum. Food to bake. Gifts to wrap. Disco ball to hang. Glow-sticks to ignite. Plastic babies to freeze in ice cubes.

I went to get some ingredients out of the fridge and noticed what I’ve been noticing for the past few weeks but haven’t cared much about until I had a million other things to do. My fridge was absolutely disgusting. Some unknown substance had spilled and it’s sticky brownness had been spreading throughout the various shelves and racks. As I’d move a bottle from one place to another, the sticky brownness would follow it, make friends and multiply.

What if one of my guests asked to put something in the fridge and saw the mess? This would not do. So instead of cleaning my bathroom, vacuuming or making food, I spent over an hour cleaning every square inch of my fridge. Then I ran around like a decapitated chicken for the last hour before the party, neglecting to feed the kids and begging Dan to take them somewhere offsite and feed them.

Oh the lengths to which I will go to procrastinate. It’s like the time I redid my filing system before the Today Show crew came out to film at my house. What if I needed to put a piece of paper away and they caught it on video? Never mind that the windows had greasy fingerprints at Magoo level and I had absolutely nothing to wear. The files needed to be reworked!

And the kids were twerked off about the party too. The house was covered with balloons, streamers, lava lamps, glow sticks and chocolate and they could have none of it. They should know by now that fun things are only for mommies.

Posted in domesticality, save me from myself | 20 Comments

Zeroer

Magoo asked me for a snack and I told him it was almost dinner. He’d have to wait.

He threw his head back, slammed his eyes shut and began a loud and nasally whine. “Mooooommmmmmmmm!” Kids have a knack for turning the dear name of Mother into the most hideous word in the English language.

Before I could respond, Laylee jumped in, “Magoo! DON’T whine about it! If you whine, you’ll just get even zeroer.”

Posted in kid stuff, parenting, unbearable cuteness | 5 Comments

Mamma Mia!

MAMMA MIA 2x7 WEB ADABBA on broadway?!! Transported to Seattle?!!

I am ridiculously excited for this chance to go out for a night on the town with my ladies and see Mamma Mia! at the Paramount.

If you live in the Seattle area and want to join us for opening night, get your tickets and let me know. We’ll meet up for desert or something.

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Posted in around town, seattle mom blogs, women | 4 Comments

Whoa NETI!

This is a happy pot.As someone who has been known to vomit when faced with the sound of my husband blowing his nose and who swears they know what phlegm smells like and is sickened by the scent of it especially when it’s coming from my own body, I don’t know what possessed me to take my naturopath’s advice and buy a Neti pot with which to flush my nasal cavities.

Nasal cavities contain phlegm. Sometimes I gag just saying the word phlegm. I’ve certainly never been capable of coughing it up because then it would have to enter my mouth and my mouth is a dwelling place for taste buds and nerve endings, making it a completely unsuitable home for noxious goo. Granted, phlegm is 100% natural and possibly organic, depending on what I had to eat that day, but so is bird poop and I don’t want either of them splattered in my mouth.

But the doctor told me to get flushing with Neti so I got to the store and picked one up. When I got to the cash register, the Whole Foods clerk smiled and asked, “Is Oprah running her show about Neti pots again?”

“No.” I gave her a 3-snaps-GIRRRL!-I-belong-here smile. “My naturopath suggested it to me. Does Oprah do a show about Neti pots? I haven’t watched her in a while.”

“Oh. Yeah. This is the third one I’ve sold today and we usually sell a bunch right after they run that episode.”

I smugly tucked the pot into my fabric shopping bag and headed home to cleanse myself. I looked at the box. That girl flushing her sinuses looks so HAPPY, I thought, “This can’t be that bad.”

It can. Trust me, it can. You fill the pot with saline solution which you then pour into one nostril on your tilted head. The water then runs through all of your sinuses and, if the angle of your head isn’t precisely correct, into your mouth.

Have you ever tasted saline solution? It sort of tastes the way I imagine phlegm would taste, warm, salty, disgusting. And I know where it’s been. And I know what it’s supposed to be flushing out… or in to my mouth. And I cough and gag, compose myself, re-tilt my head and repeat.

Honk if you're reading this text.  Seriously please mention it in comments if you read this.
The drips in this image were NOT photoshopped (at least by me) Brownie’s honor.

I certainly wasn’t grinning as the goobers ran down MY face and the only reason I kept my mouth open was to let the solution run out.

Maybe I’ll try again in a few weeks… or years… or at some point when all of my taste buds and nerve endings have been fried in a terrible taste-bud-and-nerve-ending-frying accident.

Posted in blick, poser in granolaville, save me from myself | 29 Comments

Saturday

Today was Saturday.

We did some things.

My friend moved to Germany and left behind this gorgeous wreath and Dan let me claim it and bring it home even though he thinks it looks a bit like a ball of hair in a shower drain. To me it looks like beautiful funky nature.

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I like it so much that I drove 10mph all the way home holding the wreath outside my car window to avoid cramming it into the car and breaking it. My hand may need to be amputated from freezation but at least I’ll have a pretty wall to look at while I recover from surgery.

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Laylee’s been working hard to integrate “Big Miffy” into our family and it seems that Miffy is getting along just fine.

She thinks safety is the best policy and always buckles up.

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Her face looks like it was MADE for the window in our Little Tikes castle.

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She never complains about what I feed her.

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She does all her homework without getting any marker on herself or others.

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While Miffy worked scrubbing the bathrooms, I ran off to a local antique store where I found these adorable milk glass snack plates and cups and the vintage cloth napkins they’re sitting on. While I was in the store, my thoughts were never far from my antiques guru Karen. I kept thinking, “What would Karen do? What would Karen buy? Would Karen think I looked good in this vintage Smurf hat?”

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At dinner tonight we were talking about manners and Dan began to demonstrate good posture. “Wow,” said Laylee, “You’re sitting really straight.”

She sat up a little taller.

“Look. I’m straight too.”

She looked at me.

“You’re pretty straight Mom, except for your breasts.”

We played outside in the sun and in the rain, sometimes simultaneously.

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And then I had a culinary festival of poserhood and baked my own granola! I can finally hold my head up high in Seattle.

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And then I wrote about it all on the internet.

And then I went to bed.

Posted in around town, Random | 25 Comments

Never Say that Word!

What are the “bad words” at your house? [come and share at Parenting.com]

Posted in parenting | 4 Comments