Seriously?

Last week I was driving Tatertot to "daycare". All was right in the world, the sun was shining, it wasn't too hot yet (yeah, it was one of those stupid 100 degree days last week), as evidenced by the fact that there were lots of joggers out and about.

I like joggers. More specifically, I like male joggers who like to jog bare-chested. Can I get an Amen?

Anyway, so it was a nice morning. And Tatertot was in a decent mood, too, which is always a bonus. Especially since this was the one day a week that she spends at Aunt P's house. I don't know what her deal is (since, as P put it, "This is the house of Tatertot worship!") but she screams and cries "Noooooo!!!!" when she realizes we're going P's directions instead of toward the Sitter. She's also been known to do a more subdued, quiet, but consistent, "no-no-no-no-no-no-no," as well, which is certainly more funny. But that day she was kind of OK with it.

So we're driving, I'm sight-seeing, enjoying the joggers... We pull up behind one of them, he's youngish, maybe 20 or so, shaved head, wearing a racerback tank and shorts, jogging along. As we pass, he pauses by the bus stop to catch his breath. I continue to sneak glances in the rear view and couldn't help but notice as the school bus (!!) pulls up to the curb and he climbs in.

Yup. I feel dirty.

Psych!

Wow. So you all actually thought I'd stick around and, like, write stuff didn't you. Suckers!!

No, really, I'm back. But things got kinda crazy last weekend, so here's the breakdown:

Friday nite: the family arrives. By family, I mean G-ma & G-pa, E & D and 4 kids. Sleeping arrangements are made. Valium is taken, wine is drunk. The first part of the deck (by the back door) is completed, and dad and I are working on the picnic table when the gang arrives back from skating (which I totally skipped out on).

Then things got realz. A.k.a., the hard liquor came out in the form of a Mango Mojito frozen drink bucket. It was gone in about an hour and a half.

La Polar Bear Nikita

Saturday: Hangover begins with a trip to the zoo: 5 kids and 4 adults. Oy. But we all survived, so yay us! Tatertot really liked the monkeys - she kept saying oo-oo-ah-ah and giggling. We also saw the polar bear, Nikita (am I the only one who expects the bear to go all ninja and pull out a gun or something?), and otters and pandas and kangaroos. The tigers made me sad till I saw the picture of the new enclosure they're building for them and realized they plan to feed them live children. (No really, the rendering clearly showed children lying next to the tigers while adults sat at nearby cafe tables sipping espresso and lattes. I can't wait - it looks wicked cool! I mean, who doesn't enjoy a good mauling over coffee?) *

So after about an hour and a half of that craziness we gave up and headed back to the house for lunch. After lunch, the other adults took the older kids to Kaleidoscope & Science City while Tatertot had a nap and dad, J, R & I built a deck! w00t!

That evening: BLOCK PARTY! Woohoo! There was food & bouncy houses & live music (way better than the drum circles I remember from my youth - not that I really remember much from that time). And more slushy drink buckets!! Yum!

Sunday: More Hangover Fun (TM)! No really, I don't think anybody got all that drunk. Although you wouldn't know it just from looking at the pix. B should really not be allowed to have a phone/camera anywhere on her person when there's that much liquor involved. Case in point: **

Holy exploding hot dog, Batman, I think we might be a little drunk.

Since the adults were hungover and had bribed the children with promises of greasy breakfast for good behavior, we did what any self-respecting family of drunks might do and went to Mama's for breakfast.


Finally, FINALLY, everybody left. Except the deck builders, but that was ok, cause we still had deck to build, yo! Which we did. For the rest of the day. With only a few more trips to the Home Depot (it's not a real project till you've made at least 3 trips, them's the rules).

And since you've all been waiting so patiently, here's the finished product:

TADA!!

'K, so now that we're all caught up, I'm gonna go drink some more. I gotta bunch of left over slushy buckets calling my name...




* I really wish I had taken a photo of the fancy sign with this picture on it. I kid you not, in that drawing there were children in the enclosure playing with the tigers.

** To quote J: "Look how big my boobs look in that picture!"

Life lessons are better with fire

So we celebrated the 4th last weekend - spent it with the fam - and it was Grrrreat!(TM). This was the first year that Tatertot really got it. Last year, she was too little to really understand and too little for me to attempt to keep her up for the big nighttime show. But this year she was the perfect age: she's too young to try to do light-em-up works by herself so I didn't have to worry about her running around with a punk, but she's old enough to enjoy them. She understands "HOT" and was more than happy to stomp on some poppers. And the look on her face when she saw that first big nighttime blossom of explody fire? Priceless. Watching her reaction was more entertaining than watching the fireworks.


The other kids were great, too. I saw one minor burn and a lot of fighting, but they behaved themselves for the most part. That's the thing with the 4th - teaching kids to respect fire, follow directions and that there are consequences to their actions. If you're not careful, you will get hurt. Wear closed toe shoes, not flip flops. Listen when I tell you to slow down and walk, don't run. Keep the damn punk away from the giant bag of fireworks! It's a rite of passage, and in my opinion, it does kids good - great lessons with minimal (hopefully) impact. A few small burns are worth the lessons in taking care, being aware of your surroundings and respect for fire and dangerous explody things.

So I was understandably disappointed by the report on the news this morning that an EIGHT year old was caught (gasp!) lighting ILLEGAL fireworks out in Joco. The horror! What irresponsible parents! They had a picture of said illegal items as well - wow, there's all the stuff that we were just lighting off last night. That my 4-year old nephew was lighting off last night. Yeah, stuff that you'd find at your local tent - we're not talking crazy home made fire bombs that are unpredictable and might take off a hand or bigass professional grade exploders. No, these were fountains and Black Cats and sparklers.

Are you kidding me? As crazy great aunt Shua says, "A healthy immune system is a challenged immune system". Same goes for everything - if you challenge yourself you get stronger. If you protect and shelter and hand everything to your kids on a silver platter you create soft, entitled, spoiled adults who have no idea how to cope and function in a real world situation. Don't just warn about the dangers of fire, take them to a bonfire, let them get close and roast a marshmallow. Then show them how to work a fire extinguisher. This culture of debilitating fear that we're living in isn't doing anybody any good.

Personally, I can't wait till Tatertot is big enough to hold the punk on her own. Teaching her to respect fire and dangerous explody things will be awesome - and I can't wait to see her face when I teach her how to write her name in the air with a sparkler. I'll just have to make sure I have some ice and lots of kisses for the little sparkler burns.

Sooo.... there's that.

I've decided to start a blog. Obviously, if you're reading this, this isn't news to you. Or if it is news to you, I wanna trade my Valium for whatever YOU'RE on. Seriously - I'll brown bag lunch swap ya for realz!

I'm not really sure why I decided to start a blog. Well, that's not entirely true... I had a bad day last week. It's been a while since I've had a bad day. And I had Valium and cookies for dinner. (Don't worry, I made the small human mac n cheese instead of just cookies. Although I did let her have a cookie while it was on the stove cooking.) Anyway, the point of the story was that I liked the way the phrase rolled off the tongue: Valium and cookies for dinner. And I said to myself, "Self," I said, "that would make a fantastic blog title."

So...  here we are.

Then I thought, what the hell would I write about? The more I thought about it, I realized that I don't wanna turn into one of those people on MyFace-in-a-Tube that only talks about their kids. I've been guilty of that a lot lately, and for that, my Facebook friends, I do apologize.

So here's the deal: this is where I will be my mommy persona - the single mom venting about schedules and the sitter and the baby daddy, etc. - and the proud mama sharing all the super cute stuff the small human has decided to bestow upon the rest of us poor mortals. Oh, and the full time graphic designer who is waaaay too stressed out about her job on top of all that (hence the titular Valium). Add a dash of pop culture, a dollop of bad humor and a strong sense of cynicism and what do you have? Why, I do believe we just mixed up a big batch of Valium-laced cookies!

First order of business, blog buddies: I need a stage name/online handle for the small human. A friend of mine has fabu online handles for her children: Ironflower, Lovebug and Hugmonkey. So let's hear your suggestions. Let Mission Munchkin Moniker begin!