Speedy Blathery Snatches From the Past 48 Hours

Crazy crazy crazy! I am tired.

Wednesday night we had babysitting. Seymour went biking, I went to dinner. The restaurant did not have the foie gras advertised by their online menu (and let that be a source-verification lesson to you all!), but they did have something equally morally questionable and iron-rich: a veal porterhouse. With mashed potatoes and a truffled cream sauce. I could hear my hemoglobin sighing with delight.

I returned home to a very flustered Babysitter Cece. Iz had accidentally locked them out of the house once, and then decided that her spy-kid-like re-entry through the kitchen window was so exciting that she pulled it on Cece two more times--once while Leelo just had escaped into the house ahead of them.

Thankfully Iz was in bed by the time I returned, so I didn't have to kill her. Cece was too kind to tell me to take a strap to her and made excuses for her instead. And I do understand how thrilling it must have been for her to have that kind of adventure. But we are having ongoing discussions about the danger she put everyone in, she is not to see any friends for two days, and she had to write Cece a heartfelt note of apology.

Plus I let her know that, in the Olden Days, had I done such a thing I would have experienced a spanking so severe that I wouldn't have been able to sit for days. I think that got through if nothing else did.

Bad Moms Coffee. Sigh. Happiness. Although Badger was not there.

Then Iz went to our local dentist for the first time. And, awwww, she has her first cavity! It'll get filled next week.

The dentist gave her the most excellent bag of tricks. A timer (hourglassish) to help gauge how long to brush her teeth, those pink pills that reveal any remaining plaque, a tongue scraper, multicolored dental floss, etc.

The dentist took one look in our girl's mouth, and, seeing the intense lower jaw crowding that made her first adult tooth push out two baby teeth to get through, reacted with the expected "oh, my!"

Apparently our girl told the dentist that she "didn't have a photographic memory, but it's still pretty good."

Yeah. That must be why, when I turned off The Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" mid-song, she sang the rest of a truncated line even though she's only heard the song in its entirety two or three times (she usually loops the "Uno Dos Tres Quatro Cinco Cinco Seis" part, ignoring the rest). Thankfully its expletive count is rather low compared to most of their songs--the only violation is "ass."

Leelo's got The Ramones' "Mama's Boy" chorus down. He sings it all the time, and asks me to do it too--although I must pat his tummy when it's my turn. He also has his own version, "Izzy's Boy."

His speech therapy session went well yesterday afternoon. They're working on adjectives (big/little etc.). She remarked upon how changed he is from the boy she started working with 18 months ago. I hope hope hope so.

In order to boost my iron levels, I made sloppy joes for dinner last night. From scratch! They were farking awesome once I tweaked the recipe and added a buttload of Sriracha. But this meant that the kids spent a good hour force-watching TV so I could cook. I'm trying to figure out when else during the week I'm going to get any real cooking done as Thursday is Iz's only homework-free day (although she still has a mandatory book-a-night reading assignment that we sign off on every day).

The wonder that is TeeVo continues to deliver much in the way of interesting laundry-time viewing material.

That remake movie, The Riing? When are people going to figure out that disjointed enigmas are insufficient substitutes for good storytelling? Although the sequence where the girl crawled through the TV screen is going to keep me sleeping fitfully for many nights.

Actually I've been sleeping fitfully since I started taking those supplements daily. Sweating at night and such. WTF? I am normally an excellent sleeper. I don't need additional stamina drains at this point and so am hoping it's an adjustment phase.

Like most people, I am semi-obsessed by remote archipelagoes and so have been watching documentaries on the Aleutians. I should know better, but still always imagined them as wildlife, particularly avian, wonderlands. In fact Seymour and I have talked about a birding expedition to both them and the neighboring Pribilofs, for years. Who wouldn't want to see eiders in the wild?

I don't want to go into the depressing details, but the Aleutians, their people, and wildlife were severely fucked up by WWII Japanese and American resettlements, occupations, and conflicts. Shredded by thousands of troops. War debris cleanups are recent and ongoing. Nuclear testing. Overfishing. Now I'm really depressed and will stop.

This morning both Seymour and I had alarm malfunctions. Our double redundancy system obviously needs review.

His workplace is hosting the annual international conference for his type of business for the next five days, so we won't be seeing him until Wednesday or so.

Leelo's school went well this morning. Our boy learned how to climb up into and back out of the school fort's trap-door style entry by observing another child. Very encouraging.

I spent Leelo's school time going to the chiropractor (aaaaah!), talking to the good doctor's spouse/admin about vaccination options, attempting to be helpful at Iz's school but instead wasting reams of state-underfunded copy paper and shamefacedly taking the job to CaupyMat and paying for it myself, and then meeting poofy little snuggly Milton!

I am leaving several things out but you do understand that even a life as boring as mine can be a logistical nightmare.

Now I must go water all those pots of plants littering my yard and porches. I'm supposed to do this every-other-daily during the summer, but am finding finding the time increasingly challenging. I will be adopting out as many plants as I can before the thirdling arrives, but the too many of them have touching stories attached and couldn't possibly be given away. This one was given to me by dear Sukie shortly before she died, this was on the altar at cousin D.'s funeral, this showed up on our doorstep when Iz was born, when Leelo was born, at Iz's welcoming ceremony, at Leelo's ceremony, Iz grew this herself from scratch, this is the first plant of this variety that I didn't kill...you understand.

Every other plant is going, though. As I must, to get Iz from school and then relieve Therapist F of Leelo duty and then take Iz to ballet. Have a good weekend.