Sher: I want Thanksgiving:

Me: Thanksgiving does sound good, as much as I hate the month of November in general.

Sher: You hate the month of November? Whatever for? 1. Cool things always seem to happen in November. 2. It is the month before Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year. 3. It goes by fast because of the giant vacation to look forward to at the end of the month. Explain.

Me: It is stupid! And orange! And filled with pilgrims and Indians and cornucopias! Perhaps my childhood hatred of all things pilgrim is clouding my judgment a bit.

Sher: WHAT did Mom and Dad DO to you before I was born???? All of those things are awesome! How can you not look at a cornucopia and have the warm fuzzies?

Me: HAHAHAHA! I don’t know! I just HATED learning about pilgrims and the Mayflower and the first Thanksgiving SO VERY MUCH as a kid. And now, on November 1, I become surly for a 30-day period. Well, surlier than usual anyway. My husband thinks I am a freak.

Sher: OMG you are CHANDLER. Except Dad is not a Vegas Burlesque dancer.

Rock candy rock candy rock candyrockcandyrockcandy.  I’m sure it was very annoying.  (In fact, apparently more than one of my sister’s friends saw my FB status updates and kept saying FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL YOU PLEASE GET YOUR SISTER SOME ROCK CANDY.)

As it turns out, there is unfortunately no rock candy to be had in the town where I live.  At least not that I could find, and believe me when I say I carted poor AE all around town one day in search of it.  I even went into kitschy Texana-type stores, which I normally avoid like the plague.  I discovered that the local mall’s candy store is for crap.  Usually it’s readily available at souvenir shops, and sadly, I simply do not live in a tourist mecca of any kind.  You can get it at Cracker Barrel, but we don’t have one of those either.  At least not for another couple of months, and my craving for rock candy was not willing to wait that long.

Some of my friends were all “MAKE IT YOURSELF!  You can do it!”

Spoiler alert:  No.  I cannot.  But I did try.  And while I’m on the subject, should you ever lose your mind (like me) and decide that you need rock candy RIGHT THIS MINUTE, I will let you in on a little secret (that you probably know already if you have taken a science class at about a 3rd grade level).  Rock candy takes a while to form.  It’s like a science experiment, and you have to let it sit for at least a day so all the little crystals can…well, crystallize, I guess.  Anyway.  Homemade rock candy = not an endeavor for the impatient.

Step 1: Make sure you have all necessary ingredients (sugar, water, corn syrup, and food coloring if desired) on hand.  Check.  Also, wine.  Check check.  Heat until the sugar dissolves.

Step 2: Put your weird cooling jar/string/dowel rod/pencil contraption whatzit out of the way, someplace where it can sit for a couple of days while the crystals supposedly form on the strings.  (Which in this case, means in front of liquor non-cabinet in far corner of kitchen.)

Step 3: Pour the hot, sugary, colored goo into your glasses to crystallize (or make your husband do it, as I did).  As it turns out, you need some sort of weight on the ends of the strings otherwise they just float up.  Lesson learned, after a few stressful moments of rigging them with part of a binder clip, for lack of anything better.

Step 4: Uncertainty sets in but as it turns out, sugar crystals do not.

Step 5: Wait a few days.  Admit defeat, cut your losses, and go visit your sister, who lives in the nearest metropolitan area where there are actual decent candy stores that carry rock candy.  Locate one of these candy shops with your iPhone, and go buy some freaking rock candy in what will probably be the quickest sale ever made by the befuddled store owner, who is used to people browsing his shop for extended periods of time instead of weirdos like you, who march in, grab a package of purple rock candy (the only acceptable color) and bring it to the register inside of fifteen seconds, while your sister is trying to convince you to buy more than one package because for the love of all that is good and holy, she doesn’t ever want to hear about your need for rock candy for the rest of her life, she’s warning you.

The end.

(Brief tangent – I’m always impressed that these days I’m so easily awakened by one single baby yelp.  I used to be such a heavy sleeper that I couldn’t even wake up to an alarm.  My mom would call me on exam days my freshman year of college because it was entirely likely that I would turn off the alarm in my sleep and completely miss my test.  And in high school she used to have to throw cold water on me to get me out of bed.)

(Brief tangent #2, confidential to Val – Bong bong Rita.)

So anyway, I was lying there awake, listening to the sounds of a toddler snoring over the monitor, when a fairly loud clicking sound began.  Very rhythmic clicking, like a metronome.  It clicked for about two minutes or so, then stopped.  I did not hear it again.

I’ve been thinking about it all day, and for the life of me I cannot figure out what in the bloody hell could have been making that noise.  At the time, my groggy mind reasoned that it was her rainforest music thing.  It has a couple of different settings, one of which moves the animals up and down.  We just leave it on the music-only setting because the lights and motion are very distracting, but Miss T has recently figured out where the switches are.  So in the middle of the night I convinced myself that the clicking must be the animals moving.  But when I checked on it today, it was exactly as it should have been.  Nothing had been changed.

N was the one to get Miss T out of her crib this morning, so I asked him if anything had been amiss.  No, he said, everything seemed normal.  I’m not sure what I was expecting him to find, but something had to have been making that sound.

Now it tasks me.  WTF was that?  It wasn’t Miss T banging on the crib unless she is some sort of rhythmic savant.  The sound was too uniform.  There isn’t a metronome anywhere in our house as far as I know.  There certainly isn’t one in Miss T’s room.  The only other possibility I can think of is this thing.  It makes a similar sound when it is turned on.  WHICH IT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.

Something hinky is afoot.  It just better not be a poltergeist.  There’s simply no extra room in this house.  We’re full, thanks very much.

Even though we don’t leave on our vacation until tomorrow morning, obviously my brain checked out yesterday.

And today, I am having a hard time getting motivated to do anything.  So I am writing this instead of doing laundry or packing or anything else that would actually be productive.  But in my defense, I can’t pack my clothes because N hasn’t yet given me the weather report for our destination.  I could be packing Miss T’s clothes/toys/various accoutrements, or doing the dishes in the sink, or even taking the dog to the kennel but um, I’m not.  FAIL.  I always do this right before a trip, it’s like I’m subconsciously trying to make the pre-trip excitement and anticipation go as far as possible.

Okay, really.  I have got to get off my ass and do something.  Anything!  I know!  I’ll go buy a couple of iTunes gift cards and get my iPod ready for the flight.

I’ll probably try and post from the airport tomorrow morning to reveal the destination.  (Because I am sure you are all on pins and needles.  Or maybe that is just me.)  Stay tuned…

*****

Did anyone watch the men’s 4 x 100 swimming relay last night?  Was that not the most awesome win ever?  Go Team USA!!  I was about to go to bed but decided I could spare a few more minutes and I am so glad I did.

I must admit to being a little bit disappointed in our women’s gymnastics team, though.  They were having a rough go of it for sure, but maybe things will improve.  I hope.   Speaking of gymnastics, I will be cheering on Oksana Chusovitina.  Any 33-year-old who can still hang in a sport dominated by teenagers is someone I can get on board with.  This is her fifth time at the Olympics, which is totally unheard of for a female gymnast!  Amazing.

*****

My sister says that she has gotten her computer back from the repair shop, so maybe now she can start her blog.  ENTERTAIN ME NOW.  No more procrastinating or excuses!

*****

Miss T was rather on the crabby side yesterday (since she still refuses to abide by normal human sleep patterns) so in a desperate attempt to make the time pass we went to Walmart (desperate times call for really incredibly desperate measures).  While there we decided to search again for these primary composition notebooks that AE has to have for kindergarten.  I had never in my life seen or heard of these things.  They are blank at the top of each page and have those special wide lines at the bottom.  You know, the kind with the dashes that supposedly helps kids learn to write correctly?  (Do they still call that D’Nealian?  So weird.)

MY GOD, those things are hard to find!  We had heard that they were always the most challenging item on the school supply list and that was not an exaggeration.  The first time we tried Walmart, no luck.  We asked a passing employee who confirmed that yes, they do carry them but were currently out.  And yes, there would be another shipment but he didn’t know when or how many.  Evidently they come in some sort of magical secret shipment that can’t be tracked or something, I didn’t really catch the explanation because all I heard was These are going to be a monumental pain in the ass for you to find and we’re pretty much the only place that carries them and therefore we feel no need to make it easier on you.  Sucker. 

Since our initial attempt at Walmart, we tried several other stores.  No dice.  Then during our unplanned time-waster trip yesterday we decided to look one more time.  And happened to find 4 of them, partially obscured on a random shelf nowhere near the school supply aisle.  SCORE.  He needs two for this year and two for first grade so I will never have to look for the damn things again.  OH WAIT.  I have another kid.  CRAP.

Before I leave this fascinating subject, I have one more gripe with the Primary Composition Notebook of Doom.  Regular old-fashioned composition notebooks = $0.50 each.  One PCNoD = $2.44.  OF COURSE.

*****

I’ve been looking around for some sort of inexpensive activity table for Miss T.  (She is a crazy standing fool, that one.  At 7.5 months old she’s already standing without support for several seconds at a time.)  I didn’t want to pay much and found something doable at the local kids’ consignment store on Saturday.  It’s a Playskool Air-Tivity table (missing almost all of the pieces, unfortunately), which they don’t make anymore.  Probably because they are LOUD and freaked out one too many kids back in 2002.  I only know that’s when the Air-tivity line was introduced because when AE was a baby he had an Air-Tivity Stacker which scared the ever-loving shit out of him.  It’s a good idea in theory – air wooshes up through the toy and makes parts of it spin and whirl – but in reality the battery-operated fan is way too loud.  It terrified AE so much that the only way he would get near it was with the batteries removed.

I only mention this as an example of the fundamental difference in my kids’ personalities.  I cleaned the table up and replaced the batteries, and as soon as I turned it on Miss T got all excited.  She happily stood at it, chattering and squealing with glee while the table wooshed air and played music loudly.  AE, on the other hand, eyed it suspiciously from across the room, clearly not appreciating the noise.  What is that thing, he asked warily.  He continued to keep an eye on it all afternoon, startling from time to time when Miss T would re-activate the fan.  His father and I found the whole thing quite amusing.  It continues to amaze me how two children from the same parents can be so different.

*****

I got a wild hair Saturday afternoon and decided to clear out one of the cabinets under my bathroom counter.  It’s the one where I’ve been keeping extra toiletries and bars of hotel soap.  OMG, hotel soap.  I think I may have a problem.  Someone should stage an intervention, because in that cabinet I found AT LEAST 100 different bars of hotel soap that I have collected over the years (seriously, I found a bar with the Carnival Cruise Line logo.  We last cruised Carnival for our honeymoon.  In 2001.)  There were also zillions of bottles of hotel shampoo and conditioner.  And body lotion, sewing kits, shoe shine kits (WTF.  WHY AM I SAVING SHOE SHINE KITS), bath salts and even mouthwash.  What is wrong with me?  Even after throwing out everything that had obviously gone bad, I still have an entire bin full of the stuff.  Why do I save it if I am never going to use it?  I officially have enough bars of soap to last me the rest of my life.  It is clearly some sort of hoarding compulsion.  I’m probably the reason hotel rooms are so expensive, because I hide all the free stuff in my bag each day so that the cleaning staff will put out more.  So that I can take it all home and hide it under my bathroom counter where it can stay until it goes bad and has to be thrown out.  Am a crazy person.  SEND HELP.

*****

The McDonald’s near my office is in the process of adding a McCafe so they are giving away free samples, a different kind of coffee every day.  On Friday I asked for the sample, and was rewarded with a full-sized iced latte.  I couldn’t believe that they actually intended to give me the regular size as the free sample, so I assumed it was a mistake.  Apparently not because when I asked for the sample today I received a full-sized caramel cappuccino.  FREE COFFEE = AWESOME. 

This post brought to you by the letter C for caffeine.

So today was the day of my scheduled jury duty.  And I did not get picked.  Bummer.  I was juror #322, though, so I can’t say that it was a huge surprise they didn’t get to my name on the list.  On the plus side, it didn’t take very long for them to dismiss us and I was able to donate my $6 payment to a local charity.  (Brief tangent:  I was puzzled by the ”I don’t want to be paid” checkbox.  I understand not caring about the paltry $6, but what asshats are checking THAT box instead of choosing one of the three charities given as options just below?)  Also, now I don’t have to worry about it interfering with our plan to leave early for San Antonio on Friday.  Which brings me to:

NonSoccerMom is a selfish brat, item number 28457 of 4 million or so:

N hurt his back over the weekend, and I can’t help but feel frustrated with him.  BECAUSE I AM A HORRIBLE PERSON.  After all, if he is miserable and can’t get around this weekend then it affects ME.  I’ve been looking forward to this trip for months, and now there’s a dark cloud hanging over it!  Man, I am such a bitch sometimes.  The good news is that he just got back from the doctor with prescriptions for muscle relaxers and vicodin.  So even if I have to push him around San Antonio in a wheelchair, at least he’ll be happy about it!

All babies want to get borned

N and I watched Juno last night (probably the only people left in the world who hadn’t seen it yet), and we both really enjoyed it.  Afterwards he was wondering what the point was, and what I got out of it was that everyone has a little growing up to do.  Coming-of-age, I guess.  It had a great cast, Allison Janney, J.K. Simmons, Jason Bateman.  Ellen Page was adorably spunky as Juno, I absolutely loved her.  Jennifer Garner’s character Vanessa wasn’t as perky as I had expected, but she of course did a great job.  This was definitely an off-beat darkish comedy, but I thought it was heartwarming and I teared up in a few places.  I HATED the music, though – way too quirky for me.  Other than that it was great, sweet but not sappy, dark but not depressing.  I highly recommend.

Release the Kraken!

The other night I had an incredibly vivid and bizarre dream.  I was with some of my high school girlfriends on a cruise.  Which was really a fishing boat.  We were in the middle of the ocean at night when suddenly a terrible wave capsized us, a la The Perfect Storm.  Quickly we realized that it wasn’t a weather front but a giant sea creature that was dragging the boat down.  It looked like one of those colossal squids but was black and extremely squishy.  (Actually, real-life squids are probably pretty squishy, but this was emphasized in my dream for some reason.  It was REALLY squishy.  Like Floam.)  So anyway, once the squishy squid-monster dragged us down to the depths, suddenly things changed and we were inside an underwater resort.  It kind of reminded me of (NERD ALERT) the Gungans’ underwater city in Star Wars:  Episode I – The Phantom Menace.  Everything was enclosed in a giant bubble.  ANYHOW, then we encountered my friend Allyson, who was getting a massage and listening to her iPod.  Then there was something about an underwater football game, but I’m unclear as to the final resolution since Miss T managed to wake me up right about then.  Moral of the story:  I should not eat Frosted Mini Wheats right before bed.  Holy cow.

Not exactly the luck o’the Irish

It has come to my attention that the company operating Bennigan’s Grill and Tavern has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and as of today, all Bennigan’s locations are closed for good.  This timing is interesting, as BB and I had discovered just yesterday that our location offered $1 beers Monday – Thursdays.  We had added it to the list of places where we can get our drinks on the cheap!  Plus they had a turkey sandwich on a pretzel-thing that was pretty damn good.  *sigh*

And while we’re on the subject of luck

I purchased these very Lean Pockets at the grocery store just last week.  I haven’t bought any sort of Hot Pocket product in a couple of years at least, but I thought this new flavor looked appealing so I decided to give them another go.  SON OF A BITCH.

can i get on a flight with pinkeye – Sure!  Just don’t rub your eye goop on the flight attendant and you’re golden.  Sorry about your eye, man.  That sucks.

how to be a soccer mom – Sorry, can’t help you there.  My goal is to NOT be a soccer mom.  Or didn’t you notice the title of this blog?

no to soccer moms – I agree.  Although this is sort of an odd thing to Google.

soccermom cat – I do own a cat, but she is not a mother and generally speaking does not attend sporting events.

watch release the bats – Is this a movie?  Haven’t heard of it myself, but I can tell you that Bats with Lou Diamond Phillips isn’t worth the time invested.

the ring scared the shit out of me static tv – I KNOW, right?  It scared the shit out of me too.

And there are several variations on i scored a soccer mom.  Um.  Congratulations?

*****

In honor of The Dark Knight, which opens today (and which my husband is going to see tomorrow but I AM NOT, damn kids and their need for supervision) I will attempt to review the previous Batman movies in three words or less:

Batman.  An excellent classic. 

Batman Returns.  Creepy and dark.

Batman Forever.  Cheesy and spastic.

Batman and Robin.  Brain-bleedingly awful.*

Batman Begins.  Different but enjoyable.

*Okay, I can’t let that go so easily.  There are not enough words in the English language to describe how horrifically bad this movie is.  It was on TV last night and I was reminded just how terrible it is - I couldn’t take more than a few minutes since I already sat through it once in my life.  While the cast is made up of some quality actors, it just doesn’t work.  The acting is stiff, there are too many separate plots, the lines are intolerably cheesy and as much as I like Arnold Schwarzenegger this is probably his worst peformance ever.  EVER, in the history of his ENTIRE CAREER.  He has all these awful one-liners that just make me cringe.  If you have had the good fortune NOT to see this, don’t.  Really.

*****

I ordered my iPod today!  N found me a pink Nano on eBay that was about $60 cheaper than I have seen anywhere else.  Plus free shipping.  And it is supposedly new in the package, so we’ll see when it gets here I suppose.  I can’t wait – soon I shall finally join the 21st century!  Woo hoo!

*****

And now for the important stuff.  I believe I have established that since Miss T doesn’t yet sleep through the night (although she has been doing better lately, can I get an AMEN) I watch quite a bit of TV very early in the morning.  Since Nick at Nite has recently started airing Family Matters, I find myself struggling with the following philosophical dilemma:  who is more annoying, Carlton Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, or Steve Urkel?  It’s a tough call.  Urkel’s voice is infinitely more grating, but this is less of an issue when you are watching it muted with closed captioning.   He’s just a lovable nerd, where Carlton is a grade-A (but lovable) spaz.  Carlton is also an extreme snob so that’s a point against. However, I believe I mentioned my disdain for Urkelbot a few days ago, so that has to be factored in as well.  (Not to mention Myrtle Urkel and Stefan Urquelle, please stop the insanity.)  I really can’t decide, YET I CONTINUE TO WATCH.  What is wrong with me?  Wait, don’t answer that.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Moving on! So, my son spit on another kid at school yesterday. This is completely uncharacteristic behavior for him (THANK GOD), and everyone I’ve told the story to has been completely shocked. As I’m sure I have mentioned before, he is very easy-going and doesn’t give us a lot of trouble so this came totally out of the blue. When I asked him why he spit on Nicole, he said she was mean and kept making him mad and finally he got so mad he spit on her. Now, I can kind of see his point, because Nicole is quite the dominant, bossy alpha female, and has a tendency to be kind of a bully. She’s also the only kid in the class that is taller than AE. I’m certainly not saying she deserved to be spit on but I can see how she might have pushed him to the end of his rope. Anyhow, last night we got to have a discussion on Behaving Appropriately in Public, subtitled Why We Do Not Spit On Our Friends. I have to admit, there are certain aspects of mothering that catch me totally off guard. I’m especially surprised because I didn’t think that AE possessed the necessary skills for projectile spitting – this is a kid who still has to use toddler toothpaste because he can’t be trusted to spit into the sink rather than swallow. So on the upside, at least he is mastering new skills.

* * * * * * *

While I was in the Austin area I had an unexpected bonus – I got to meet Amalah! She was in Austin for SXSW and one of her readers had an open house so people could drop by and say hello. Amy is very cute and nice, just as funny in person as she is on her blog. She is also very wee. I felt like a giant when I stood next to her. See?

Six weird things about me:

1. I am deathly afraid of roaches. A horrible, paralyzing fear that I know is totally irrational, yet I can do nothing about it. When I see one, pretty much all I can do is scream and hope that someone comes to kill it and dispose of it OUT OF THE ROOM. Roaches, GAH. Even writing about it is freaking me out.

2. I have a tendency to be slightly obsessive-compulsive about certain things. This causes me to have to open and re-close doors to make sure they latched (even if I know they did), lock my car repeatedly, and check that I unplugged my flat iron multiple times (even if I am positive that I already did it).

3. If I like a movie, I can watch it over and over (and over!) without getting tired of it. Really. This is especially true of action movies, as I have seen the Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, and Indiana Jones movies at least twenty times each and am not anywhere close to being sick of them. Oh yes, and Speed. I have seen that one approximately one gajillion times.

4. MacGyver is my favorite TV show of all time. Poo on my husband for making fun of it.

5. I can’t fold clothes on an unmade bed. If my bed is not made, then I have to straighten and arrange the comforter perfectly before I pull the clothes out of the dryer, and then the clothes can only touch the comforter, nothing else.

6. I do not eat red meat. I don’t really have a good reason for this, except that the only beef I really ever cared for was hamburgers which aren’t all that healthy anyway. And now it is just me being stubborn. I haven’t eaten it for almost 10 years (except while I was pregnant), so why start now?

TAG! You’re it! If you have a blog, post your 6 weird things there, if not, how about the comments? Come on, people, I know you’re out there!!