Did You Miss Me?

I desperately need to blog, so I am going to fix that right now… Even though I don’t have anything particularly poignant to say.

Although… and I know you’re bound to be just as excited as I am about this… I am done with the grant proposal at work! Woohoo!

What? Did I forget to mention that thing? Oh. I’ve spent the past few weeks writing a grant proposal at work, asking for money. Which is really the only reason why one would write a grant proposal, but…

Do you know how difficult (and time consuming) it can be to write a big, thesis-long, technical thing asking for money? And explaining how you will wisely and responsibly spend that money? I don’t like asking the neighbors to check the mail while we’re on vacation! Can you imagine how odd I feel asking for fistfuls of cash—even when it’s not my own?

I did find time to put the tree up, though...

 If I had participated in NaNoWriMo this year, I’d have been about half-way done, which is a vast improvement over how far I got last year. So maybe grant-proposal writing is my thing.

Nevertheless, the proposal is done, edited, and gathering signatures as we speak. And this means that the few weeks of being able to think of nothing other than the proposal are over!

Unless we win, and then I’ll be spending a lot more time thinking about the whole thing. Which is kind of the point, but hopefully, it won’t suck out all of the creative writing juices from my brain, like the writing of the proposal did.

Also? I think I’ve gained about ten pounds during this grant proposal writing process. Writing a grant requires that you eat chocolate, and have wine with dinner. And not exercise. That’s the important piece, there. I’d probably appreciate it if the weight gain thing would stop now too.

How could anyone resist this wine??? They couldn't.

Although—here’s an idea—I could go back to my Fitspo motivational posters, and my blog posts about how losing weight sucks and why exercise is the devil’s work!

You see? The juices are already starting to flow after just starting a blog post.

Except this is really a blog post to nowhere. While the big names, like The Bloggess, are incorporating half a dozen different animals (dead, alive, mythical, and saintly) in one post, and SDL, who came out of the closet as not-straight this week… here I am with no coherent thesis statement and no idea of an ending to this train wreck.

Maybe the proposal burned up that area of my cerebral cortex…

Or... maybe it's creepy owls who are now the newest thing in house accessories...

 Although, I was able to write some fun posts for Sprocket Ink over the past few weeks, and I’ve not yet had the chance to share them with you here! So, let’s have a recap of some of the good ones:

I was amazed that our culture needs Legos to explain the Bible…

I made fun of Lance Armstrong’s Twitter skillz.

I got to applaud Cory Booker, and…

I wondered what all of you would be doing with your Powerball money, had you won.

You know what? That was almost like a weekend wrap-up! Which I haven’t done forever! Perhaps I’ll bring that back as well! And maybe a giveaway? I haven’t had the chance to do one of those in a while… And didn’t I promise everyone a post of the vacuum that Twitter gave me?

And… I’m back!

Weekend Wrap-Up: Bedtime Reading

For the past two weeks, Ant and I have been working on a plan.  This plan consists of things that Ant wants to learn about, but they don’t teach in school (at least, not yet). After a crummy school year, I want to foster the idea in Ant that learning can be fun. Ant chose three things to learn about this summer: the fifty states of the US, the plant and animal kingdoms (think six classifications of life), and Greek mythology. His idea is to convert our den into a cool classroom (complete with “Good Job!” stickers and maps and a bulletin board.

So we’ve bought a US map and I’ve nabbed some cool free worksheets for the third/fourth grade crowd. I’ve even started a board on Pinterest. Most importantly, however, we found the Greek Mythology book. It’s chock full of the entire Greek Pantheon (Gaia and Uranus, the Titans, the Olympians, the heroes, and even the monsters) with full page color illustrations of the gods and goddesses in seemingly Greek artistic form.  Ant was so excited that we had to start reading it now—even though there’s still a week of school left—and we spend about 30 minutes reading it each night.

Last night, Ant stopped me as I was taking my turn in reading about Zeus defeating his father Cronus (it’s not a fourth grade reading level, after all) and exclaimed, “Whoa! Whoa. This whole book is not just telling you who the gods are. This book is a story of the whole history of ancient Greece, isn’t it?”

“Yes! That’s right!” I was excited he was catching on. I wanted to teach him about mythology and why human beings love to tell stories. It fits into the whole reading/writing thing we’ve been working on.

“Well,” he paused for a moment. “Well, this is one crazy story! Lots of weird things happen.”

“I know. And we’ve just begun. Lots more weird things will happen. Let me ask you this, though: is the story really much weirder than the stories of Adam and Eve? Or Buddha? Or even what my Nanny taught me when I was a child—about the Iktomi and Maka and Inyan?”

“Hmmm,” You could see the wheels spinning in his mind. “No. You’re right. Every one of these stories is weird and exciting.”

Weird and exciting! Success! Until this morning…

Ant was waiting for me when I woke up this morning. The first words out of his mouth were, “I’m having strange dreams. Are you having strange dreams?”

“Why, yes. I had a dream that a mountain of laundry developed into a sentient being and was chasing me throughout the house trying to eat me,” I responded. I left out the part where J pushed me in to the laundry monster in an effort to save himself.

“Mine was stranger,” he said. “I was dressed in a butter stick costume, and there was a scarecrow made of hay chasing me through a corn field. He wanted to spread me on the corn so that it could be buttered popcorn. I ran to a river, and jumped into a boat that looked like a hand. I pulled up the anchor and made my way down the river, but I couldn’t escape, because a mountain of popcorn loomed in front of me.”

I think this may be the byproduct of reading how Cronus ate his children. And then Zeus ate his first wife, Metis. I think that perhaps we should stop reading the Greek mythology before bed…

And this gives you an idea of what didn’t make the blog this week…

Let’s talk about what else happened this week!

What I wrote when I wasn’t here:

I made fun of baby names. Also, I told you the story of prom chaperones gone rogue. And because I didn’t get the chance to pose a weekend wrap up last week, I’m throwing another one in here—where I tell you how to update your zombie apocalypse survival kit to include cocktail sauce. You’ll need it when the giant cannibalistic shrimp learn how to breathe air and attack us.

What did I find elsewhere?

Well, reposting the infographic in this post lost me two friends on Facebook.

And I found out someone does the exact same thing I’ve done to trim my children’s nails…

Finally, I RSVPed to attend this on Tuesday, and I hope you do, too.

So, what was nattering on about at this time last year?

J and I went on strike, and forced the children to cook for us.

I hope you have a wonderful week this week. I am counting down the days until the kiddos are out of school  and the three day weekend strikes us!

Weekend Wrap-Up: Fun with Jasonisms

J: You didn’t write about me all week long. I thought you were going to write about me more often.

Me: Um. NO. You told me that I should write about you more often. I told you that you should get your own blog.

J: I thought I was taking on more tasks around the house to give you more time to write about me.

Me: No, I am spending some time writing short stories—something which I have not done for a long, long time.

J: Am I in the short stories, at the very least?

Me: One. I killed you off, though.

J: You did what?

Me: It was after you did that thing last week—the one where I asked you to rub my aching shoulders and you put your giant paws around my neck and pretended that you were going to strangle me like a deranged madman. And then laughed about it all night like a deranged madman.

J: Well, I thought that it would convince you not to ask me for shoulder rubs anymore. Like when I filled the dishwasher with Dawn.

Me: And I thought it would convince you not to pretend to kill me anymore. Or I will pretend to kill you in my stories. We each have our ways, honey. By the way—did the Dawn incident stop you from loading the dishwasher?

J: No.

Me: Then this isn’t going to stop me from asking for shoulder rubs either…

And this is how you know you are in a blissful marriage—you can joke about killing one another and not really mean it, all the time. 

For all of his 'attempts' to kill me, I know he
loves me because he makes me things like this...

 It weekend wrap-up time! Let’s start with what I was writing when I wasn’t here:

I told you about my hero of the month, Damon, who is a fast-acting teen (I bet it’s because he’s avoiding the Purell cocktails).

I also wondered aloud why this guy is building Titanic: The Remix, and then sailing it along the exact same path (which, if you’ll remember, ended at the bottom of the icy Atlantic) as the original.

What did I find elsewhere?

Jesse (who you can read both on her blog and Sprocket Ink) wrote a post about meeting The Bloggess, and guess who was the first person to comment on her post? (Hint: it wasn’t me.)

I also suggest that you read her post from this week called: It Looks Like a Stripper Threw Up in Here.

Angela of the Cheesy Bloggers talked of her 1990s fashion faux pas, and oh…. Yes. I did a lot of these, including the tapestry vest.  

And what was on my mind last year?

J and I were forcing the children to learn an important life lesson: that we are not short order cooks.

Weekend Wrap-Up: May Day-ish

Ah… another week gone by, and this time I’m actually going to have a weekend wrap-up! May is always a crazy whirlwind of activity (how many field trips and class projects can one school district throw at a family? I’ll let you know once the month is over, but we are standing at four and three, respectively, for the next two weeks), and I am usually rather impressed with myself if I can MOSTLY hold things together through the university’s commencement ceremonies and until the boys get out of school.

Photo Source

J and I actually had the time and the energy to have a date night last night. A date night! With a bottle of wine and things that the boys would never agree to eat (like duck. DUCK!). It was weird to be sitting down, eating together, and talking. About things that weren’t “Which one of us is going to the school lunch thing on Tuesday?” and “What time does he need to be dropped off for the Six Flags trip?”

Ah, the glamorous life of parenthood. Why didn’t the nurses warn us of this crap before we left the childbirth prep class? Why don’t they teach classes on logistics and event planning the way they do for epidurals?

While on our date night, we discussed the wild success that The Bloggess has had on her book tour (seriously, buy this book!) and J, of course, always wonders how her husband (Victor) feels about all of this excitement surrounding his wife, and then I mentioned that I planned to buy him a TEAM VICTOR shirt, and then J said the most astounding thing I’ve heard him say in our marriage…

That is, when you compare idiosyncrasies between him and myself, it becomes increasingly apparent that J is actually The Bloggess type in our relationship, and I’m more like Victor.

Say what? I have always felt that I’m the more eccentric one.

And then he laid out his case… about how I’m more the one to be silent and listen in social situations, and he’s more likely the one who says something wildly off topic and inappropriate and quirky… about how he’s the one who randomly buys things (this is true—he’s on this glasses thing—we don’t need more glasses, but he thinks he must buy them if they’re on clearance, and then we’re trying to find a place to put these things—like Waterford pilsner glass sets that he picks up for $17)… about how he’s the one with the wild imagination and no filter on his mouth…

I realized he’s right. As much as I hate to admit it, I am downright boring when it compares to J. So, why is it that I have the blog and he doesn’t? When I asked him this, he said that I just need to spend some more time writing about him. Something in a cross between “Shit my husband says,” and “Let me tell you about all of the times he’s scared the shit out of me by making the children’s toys—and other inanimate objects—‘speak’ to me when I least expect it. Like when I’m asleep.

And this is why I will never get bored in our marriage. Since the first night I met him, he’s had a thing for elaborately rigging up happy meal toys to say foul-mouthed things.

Okay, I’m done allowing J to hijack this post, so let’s get down to business! This is what I wrote when I wasn’t here:

I talked about how Don Draper’s example can save you thousands in couple’s therapy, if you just do the opposite of what he does.

On a more serious note, I talked about a one-sentence long piece of legislation in our state that makes me a bit less proud to live in Missouri. Apparently, someone forwarded it to Ellen’s show!

Also, I wrote a 6000 word piece of fiction, and submitted it to a contest here! Wish me luck (and if you write, enter it!).

What was going on elsewhere:

Alex from Late Enough shares her hatred of birds. I shared my hatred of birds with her. We realize that birds are the scourge of the earth.

Sunday Morning has broadcast the most accurate and balanced description of student loan and tuition problems that I have seen. Check it out—it shows all sides.

The Bloggess makes mention of the book signing snafu that happened directly in front of Jesse (wail of grief here!) when she was at the signing in Dallas. More on this to come!

Steffie (don’t call her that!) relates the best text message conversation I’ve ever heard.

What was I nattering on about last year?

I wrote the first ever Imperfect Mothers post, in honor of Earth Day, no less. It is one of my highest viewed posts, ever. If you haven't read it, you need to. Because it will make you a good parent AND save Mother Earth!