That's it. After almost eight years of marriage, for the first time ever, Adam is sleeping on the couch (for the night; everyone knows he naps there regularly). Booted out of the bed. Sleeping solo.

Don't fear. Our marriage isn't in trouble. Just our basement. Adam's camping out on the couch so he can get up every few hours to make sure the waters haven't reached epic Gilgamesh levels (because, let's face it, all the Noah references are getting a bit... draining).

(And I can't get "Rise and Shine" out of my head. Aaaaaggg!)

It's not so dire, as long as someone stays on top of it. Adam stayed home from work today to keep the levels down, and our playroom is still water free (well, except for the water we've tracked through it). It's just the back room and his office. And the waters are at low levels; they just need to be monitored and vacuumed. We've got three sump pumps going--my father-in-law brought the only one he could find in all the New Hampshire hardware stores he checked; Adam waited in line at our local hardware store for their 12:30 shipment; and a neighbor saw my Facebook posting and called to offer me one of hers--so we're better off than most of this town (the local e-mail list is filled with folks trying to find sump pumps and wet vacs. A number of folks are waiting for the fire department to bail them out.)

Adam is only worried about his office, as there's a subfloor than can get moldy. But as I pointed out, he's allergic to mold, so we can just wait till he gets sick and then we'll know there's mold. For some reason, he didn't love that idea.

Tomorrow, Adam seems to think he's returning to work. So I go from a day with Pie to a day with the sump pump. Sump pump. At least it's fun to say. Well, not as fun as "Bombay Sapphire martini with extra olive," but we all must find our fun where we can. Sump pump. Tee hee.

Labels: house

Some days just don't go as planned. Today is one of them.

The weekend was good but hectic with lots of running running running to get to places on time. Doodles and Pie had their last morning of hockey. Hockey ended at 10:30. Pie had a birthday party to attend at 10:30. Run run run. On Sunday, Doodles had Hebrew School at 9. Pie had an introduction to Hebrew school at 9. So Adam took them because I had a 5k race at 11, a baby shower at 11:30, and, as it turned out, Cub Scouts at 3. Run run run.

I promised a friend to run this 5k with her, to make sure she got over the finish line, which she did in fabulous style. She ran faster than I think she had anticipated and it was great. And wet. Very wet. We've got a Nor'easter going on here with, if I may, wicked winds and rain. Oy, the rain. We were soaked before we even got into the car, never mind the race. But let me tell you, the St. Paddy's Day crowd in Somerville is a dedicated one and the race was packed. And the lines for the pubs after were insane. Not that I went. Because I ran to the baby shower.

Show up at the shower, run upstairs to change my clothes. Only... I forgot a dry pair of shoes and a dry bra. So I put my lovely shirt on over my jog bra (which had been under both my shirt and my jacket), but as it was soaking wet, I soon sported what looked like two lovely milk leaks. Fun times! I spent the whole party with my hands crossed over my chest, a la a junior high girl with new breasts, until I got teased one too many times so I flipped my shirt backwards.

I got home with a whole half hour to dry off, greet my family, change my clothes and then get the boy to Scouts.

All the while, I was keeping my fingers crossed. Every Facebook status, it seems, of local folk, every message on the town's Parents e-mail list, even some e-mails on the school's PTO list, was pleading for help on how to get water out of basements. My fingers are crossed. My fingers are crossed. My fingers are crossed.

Guess what? It doesn't work. Adam is home right now trying to concoct some Rube Goldberg-style contraption to get the water out of our basement. Of course, there's not a sump pump to be found, so Adam asked his father who lives the next state over to scour the hardware stores there and to bring one to us. His father is currently searching. I won't bother keeping my fingers crossed that he'll find one. The next step is to build an ark. I swear I saw two squirrels and two raccoons waiting patiently by our back door.

But at least it's a blessed Monday, so while Adam vacuums out the basement, I can give my novel that final read over and try to get it out the door. Oh, wait! That's right. Pie has no school today. For some random conference. But she does have a room full of Polly Pockets and Groovy Girl dolls that she wants me to play with.

Good times, people. Good times.

Labels: adam, house, running

Doodles and Tab have started their own business. I've insisted they wait till April vacation to really get going, but in the meantime, if you need anything done, they're in service.

Labels: doodles

Every week we get a delivery from Boston Organics, which delivers a big box of organic fruits and veggies to our door. Now, I've never doubted the organic creds of the company, but a big fat green preying mantis/grasshopper/green thingy that appeared with our veggies definitely speak to the pesticide-free nature of our produce (and made me reconsider my avoidance of all things Monsanto).

Now, I understand it's important not to telegraph our fears and dislikes to our children. I can look any spider in the eye. I can check under dark beds and peer into dark closets without nary a shudder. I can show my kids the baby mice at our local Audubon without throwing up.

But this was a bug I could not face. It's not that the bug was so bad; it's that it was sitting in the kitchen. Pie is screaming. Doodles refuses to go near it. I'm frozen.

"I'll just throw a bowl over it and then we can figure it out," I say.

"Okay," says Doodles.

"Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!" says Pie.

I take a bowl. I approach the bug. I back up from the bug. I approach the bug again. I back up from the bug. I approach the bug again. No can do. What if it jumps away when I put the bowl down?

"You do it!" I say to Doodles.

"No way!" he says and he escapes to the family room to play his Didj.

I call Adam. He's not in. I text him: BUG! Bug emergency! We're trapped in the kitchen!

I call my neighbor Beetle on her cell phone, because I know she's due home from the library any minute. But it turns out her daughter's class there goes longer than she thought, but she'll be by when they're done.

In desperation, I even call my sister. In New York. She was always so good about letting herself into my NYC apartment, while I hid out in the loft bed, to retrieve the dead mice on my floor that my cat would try to turn into lunch. Tweedle Twirp, unfortunately, is unavailable. Or at least screening my calls. One can never be sure.

I put Pie on the counter, because she's too scared to be on the floor, and we watch the bug to make sure it doesn't hop away anywhere.

Finally Adam calls. "Are you kidding me?" he asks.

"It's a big bug. Don't you have a meeting?" I ask.

"It's at five." It was 4:10 at the time.

"Great. You have time to come home, get rid of the bug, and then get back to your meeting."

You'll be shocked by this, but he declines.

"Just smash it with a broom!" he says.

"That will kill it!"

"You want to rescue it??" he asks.

"I don't want to kill it!"

"Here's what you do," he offers as his last suggestion. "Grab a sheet of newspaper. Throw it over the bug. And then have the kids jump on it. Make it a game and see who can stomp on it first."

Yeah, that was helpful.

Luckily, it was only minutes later that Beetle and Tab show up. Of course they ring the front door bell. And we can't get to the front door. Because, you know, there's a bug there.

We open the kitchen door and yell to them to come around.

All I can say is thank goodness for Beetle. She took that bug and scooped it up and took it outside. The bug was rescued. And then it promptly died. Seriously. Right outside. It keeled over. Dead.

You just can't win. And now, I'm going to eat some pesticide-free apples. And try to ignore the fact that my daughter will forever be freaked out by preying mantises/grasshoppers/green thingies. Because of me. Because, you know, you just can't win.

Labels: me, neighbors, pie

If there's a greater torture to mankind than Wow Wow Wubzy, I have no idea what it is. This has got to be the most vacuous, vapid, piece of TV crap ever created. But Pie loves it. And Doodles is off at the Cub Scouts, weighing in his car for the Pinewood Derby, and little Pie wanted to go along too, but can't because it goes past her bedtime, so here I am watching Wow Wow Shoot Me.

I've been pretty focused lately (which is why you haven't seen as much of me here). I'm not really happy with where my novel is at the moment, but I'm probably within days of a complete first draft, at which point my poor beleaguered readers will have to help me parse what I can do to revive it. But it's a good feeling, knowing that I'll at least have the beginning-middle-end all in one piece,albeit one that will need to be dissected and rebuilt. But the body is there.

The crafty world has also sucked me in. For Purim I baked mounds of hamentashen (the ones with Fluff came out fabulously! I highly recommend. They come out tasting like toasted marshmallow and were a huge hit with the under-10 crowd). I've been baking my own bread. I've made turtles and homemade gummies. I've been knitting (see those hand warmers on Pie?) and crocheting (I made that penguin for Doodles when his class was studying penguins). My photo albums are slowly becoming organized. Waiting through dance classes and gymnastics classes and Hebrew school is much easier when I have something to do with my hands.



The final thing I have right now is running. I've signed up to do the Chicago Marathon in the fall with my friend Fish. I'm a little worried about him backing out, and I'm not going to go to Chicago on my own for a race, but I'll have a back up marathon, just in case. But I'd like to get my marathon closer to 4 hours (from 4:13:46). It's already giving me the motivation to run and I'm antsy to get out there. The hint of spring we've had is helping a lot.

So for now, it's Groovy Girls (Pie received a mother load of them as hand-me-downs from Tab, and she wants to spend all afternoon with my playing Groovy Girls with her) and Wow Wow Wubzy. If you were doing this, you'd be anxious to run, too. Far far away.

Labels: crafts, pie, running, writing

Tonight we were flipping channels, and we hit upon American Idol. Normally, it's one of the few reality shows that I don't watch. But the contestant was singing Chris Isaak's "Wicked Games," so I paused.

"This is one of those songs that I can't help but listen to, but makes me think of years that weren't necessarily the best. This song. k. d. lang's songs. What was that song? Constant... I know it wasn't Constant Contact, but that's what I keep thinking."

Adam replied, "I dunno the song at all. I don't know k. d. lang."

Which of course meant I had to grab the nearest computer and do a search on k. d. lang. "Here's the song! 'Constant Craving.' Here, I'll play it for you."

I play it for him. Doesn't really ring a bell for him. But he does say, "Oh, great. Now Amazon is going to give me a bunch of crap in my recommendations. I like a clean search on my account"

Huh?

First of all, I didn't use Amazon to search for the song. Second of all, he's worried about crap in his Amazon results? Him?? Let's look at what's in my recommended results right this very moment at 9:43 p.m.: Kidz Bop 17. Wow. Can't wait to hear that one. Clarice Bean, That's Me. Think I might join a book club to discuss that one. LeapFrog Leapster Learning Game: Batman. Leaping lizards! StarStruck. Oooh! That Christopher Wilde is soooo dreamy!

That man better hide his computer at night. Because it'll be worth it to me to wake up in the middle of the night to come do stealth searches on his computer on Amazon. I'm thinking: Selena Gomez or Martha Stewart, or, if I'm feeling particularly malicious, menstrual cups.

Clean searches. Bite me.

Labels: adam

We made it back. All in one piece. Oh, you didn't know we were gone? Disney World! I have to say, it was a really great Disney adventure, and I was truly sorry to come back. I think that Disney is one of those places where you either go as a stick-in-the mud "I hate this bullshit" attitude or you just suck it up and drink the Kool Aid. And you all remember the family motto. I sucked it up. I drank that Kool Aid and I asked for seconds!

I'm truly tired and don't think I can blog everything at this moment, so I'll hopefully add more later, but it was an excellent trip. But a few of the highlights, which may be repeats for those who are Facebook friends:

--The trip started a little ominously when we checked in at home for our JetBlue flight and then brought our bags to drop off. Now, we usually fly American. We're used to this drill. With American we usually drop our bags at curbside or head to a kiosk. JetBlue? Not so much. The line for bag drop stretched longer than the hour and ten minutes we had till our flight. In a panic, we decided to take our bags on the flight. Only of course we had packed all our toiletries and TSA decided to be sticklers on the gels over 3.5 ounces or whatever the ridiculous rule is. Out went Adam's hair gel, out went my shampoo, out went my $40 face cleaner (that sounds much better if you read it to the tune of "Rock Island" from Music Man. Here, I'll even give you the next line: Look whatayatalk. whatayatalk, whatayatalk, whatayataalk, whatayatalk?). And then, of course, the TVs on the flight weren't working. Fun times!

--Our family was following the certified, patent-pending Goldfarb System®. I don't want to give too much of the system away, but it is a fool-proof method for doing the Disney parks in the most efficient and line-preventing way. I will testify that the Goldfarb System® works. But... only if you follow it to the T. The first day I got cocky. I thought I could figure out a few shortcuts to the Goldfarb System®. But I was wrong. And I paid in a big way, with a screaming daughter and a son who waited in line for thirty minutes for the Astro Orbiter. The next day I followed the plan to the letter and had an immensely successful day. Day three, we had the system perfected to the point where my son had a mere five minute wait for Toy Story Mania, got to ride Star Tours... twice, and still got to have another go at the Buzz Lightyear ride. Yes, the system is that good.

--We had characters up the wazoo. First Pie met Cinderella, Belle, and Aurora in Toon Town. Then we had breakfast with Cinderella, Belle, Aurora, Ariel, and Snow White. Then another breakfast with JoJo, Goliath (from JoJo's Circus) and Leo and June (from Little Einsteins). Then dinner with Chip and Dale, Mickey and Pluto. Plus we ran into Goofy, Daisy, Donald Duck, and Minnie around the parks. We also caught glimpses of a whole bunch others. But that girl of mine, she can hold a grudge. Our final dinner, at the Garden Grille in The Land, Dale, Mickey, and Pluto came to our table. But not Chip. "When is Chip coming? I want to see Chip!" She would not be put off. "There's Chip! Why isn't he coming to see us?" Finally we left without Chip. She shook hands with Pluto, flirted with Mickey, had her picture taken with Dale. So I asked, "How did you like dinner?" "It was awful!" she told me. "Chip never came to see us."

--Most exciting thing for girl? When Belle noticed that her skirt had "Beast print" on it. (Why more about the girl than the boy? Because for much of the trip we split up and I spent most of my time with the girl)

--New form of torture? My mother and daughter singing "It's a Small World" over and over and over and over... and over and over and over... (deep breath) and over and over and over. And then not understanding why I wanted them to stop.

--The Wishes fireworks display was only a mild hit. I let Pie stay up late to watch it; Doodles decided to pass. We went with the Nana to watch the display over Cinderella's castle. Pie seemed to be into it, but later informed us, "I didn't like it. The booms made my teeth shake."

--At the princess breakfast, you walk in and the first thing that happens is a picture with Belle that the family gets a copy of by the end of breakfast.
Me: I want a family picture with Belle.
Pie: I want to stand between Mommy and Belle!
Doodles: I want to stand between Daddy and the wall.

I'm sure I'll have more to say later. Or maybe I won't. That's the way these blogs fly. Now I gotta go have another swig of Kool Aid. Mmm, that's good!

1973, Disney World (which only consisted of the Magic Kingdom) is 2, the boy (my cousin) is 5, I'm weeks away from 5, my first trip


2010, Disney World is 39, The boy is 6, the girl is 4, their first trip

Labels: disney, my family, vacation

For the summer of 2011, we're talking with two other families about spending the summer in Israel. The trip we took in February of last year was so amazing, that I'd love to spend more time there, get to know the country better. Husbands would only be able to spend a couple of weeks, but moms and kids could be there for four to eight weeks. Send the kids to camp there, learn the language, really immerse ourselves.

I told the kids about the idea. Pie said, "Yea!! Israel! It was so much fun! I can't wait!"

Doodles threw his head back dramatically and complained, "Israel! Again!"

Watching the opening ceremonies (finally!) we watched the dance of the First Nations. Doodles had lots of questions about them, which I try to answer. Then I say...

Me: Maybe we'll go there this summer. What would you think?
Doodles: Go where?
Me: To the Northwest. We could go to Seattle and then to Vancouver.
Doodles: Awwww! [Throws his head down in disgust.]
Me, surprised: That doesn't interest you?
Doodles: No!
Me: If you could go anywhere on vacation, where would you go?
Doodles: Egypt!
Me: Well that's not going to happen now. Where else would you want to go?
Doodles, with a big sigh: Nowhere.

Six years old. And already jaded. Wait till he realizes it's all downhill from here.

Labels: doodles