This is an impromptu survey.
I would feel much more comfortable about posting this blog into public 'real life' if I used pseudo-names for us. Those of you following me now are close to me, and you know me and the family very well. So I'm asking for suggestions.
I need to re-name the husband
the oldest daughter
the oldest son
the youngest son
the youngest daughter
and possibly myself.
I'd like to do this now before the archives get too big to troll back through and fix.
I would like to make this blog available to the general public but I'm paranoid.
So work with me, help me, humor my neurosis, whatever you want to call it.
I'm sorely tempted to call my oldest son the drama king and sorely tempted to call my oldest daughter blind to plain sight. That's because we're having a miffy day. I'm sure there are days those won't fit.
Right? Right? Leave your suggestions as comments or email me, six of one. I read both -

Yesterday was great and maybe I can post about it later. Today, I'm run down and exhausted and I'm feeling very down.

Maybe it was the fire on the ridge (we live in the foothills and this fire was almost too close for comfort). The fire wasn't that big a deal and once again it was just a weird note to the childhood I'm severely out of touch with. I told Brian it's not a fire until it has taken some 16,000 acres with it.
Still, the kids were riled up and they even refused  to look at it. This is part of our fire-safety thing. I've gone over what to do in case of fire so many times that this fire just flew in the face of all of that. What if the fire comes from OUTSIDE the house, Mommee? What then? I explained that you get evacuated and it is not a deal. We have all the various types of house insurance, contents insurance and so forth, so at this point, you grab the irreplaceable, get in the car with your family and mentally let go. That was a tough concept and it really bothered them. They refused to see the fire as it came over the hill. The fire was still a mile or more away but it was enough to bother small children.

From behind our neighbor's house, this was a ways away and they said the flames were around 8ft. Tiny from where we were. I was just surprised to see them from my driveway.

From our driveway before I went to bed, you can almost see our neighbor's house in dark relief.

The fire was out by around mid-night, there were 2 helicopters and a lot of people on the ground. I think the fire ran about 6 hours all together.

So last night, with the smoke wafting towards our house I had a million mini-nightmares. I'd wake up every 5 minutes in a fit of nerves and go back to sleep. I wasn't actually worried.  I think the dreams were a hang-over from smelling the smoke and having to walk the kids through the protocol over and over.
I had some kind of sad but sure faith in the local authorities. I live in a neighborhood, they'd come and get us if there was an issue. I'm also a very leave it in G-d's hands kinda person. There comes a point when there is nothing you can do, so you just let go. I don't fixate on the uncontrollable - though I admit fully to over-fixating on the controllable.
The kids all woke up today telling me they had bad dreams. Fire is very atavistic, I wasn't surprised. There must have been some low lying tension in the house even though Brian was completely un-impressed by the fire and I was admittedly less than worried.
I'd texted my friend saying I'd evacuate to her house. She said the chickens could stay in the garage. We were technically taken care of.

In the meantime, yesterday, we'd had a good day (albeit with one side note - not relating to fire) and by the time we got home I realized I was physically and mentally exhausted. I had too much sun and too much sugar (not good for someone with blood sugar issues) and I fell asleep for a nap to wake to the fire. When Brian started texting me from the park I knew he was serious about seeing flames on the hill, however, I was too tired to care or take much notice of what he was saying. I told him if Fire on the Mountain were his pathetic attempts at song lyrics I was going back to sleep.

I didn't wake up much better today. 4 out of 6 of us are sporting sun burns. My husband teasing me that he thought brown people don't burn. I'm a brown person who stays pretty much religiously out of the sun and I'm half not brown - so I too am susceptible. Though he seems to think my cute little tiny sun burn on my cheeks is hugely amusing - I'm still thoroughly miffed.  I have no idea how people do this sort of thing all over their body - let alone to the point of peeling. Buttercup woke up dreaming the fire had got her, screaming her brains out, and making me put water on her shoulders. I tried to explain sun burns and while she acknowledged she was burned to this moment she thinks it happened in her dreams and just carried over to reality.

So - I will post on the opening day ceremony. I will put pictures up. I will. Just not right this moment.
I'm too bummed about losing an entire weekend to fatigue and moodiness. I need to sleep some more I think and drink some green tea and get the last of the sugar out of my system. Look, it was cotton candy - what was I supposed to do? Oh, and we got free tickets for pizza and I so rarely eat pizza that isn't homemade I confess I ate both crusts. Pizza crust is my arch enemy and that is surely where I got the the aches I have today. That and 6 solid hours of bouncy castles and dunk tanks and sun and cake walks and clowns and sun and bouncy castles and sun and wait, did I mention the sun?
This is probably why I won't go to State Fairs anymore.

The first topic up for grabs is my front bathroom soap dispenser. One of you either has it or knows where it is and none of you are talking. I've been looking for weeks now. Where is it? Did one of the kids flush it down the toilet? Did I throw it out rather than clean it? Did someone mistake it for a disposable one?
I've had 2 guests call me into my bathroom and announce I didn't have soap to wash their hands. I'd say something trite here but with my luck they are reading this. For the record there was bar soap in the bar soap "dispenser" but in these modern times that is just not what people expect to see. I'm surprised I am so last century I mean they sell those touchless ones at BBandB. So very international airport, not touching my soap dispenser. Did you know that according to the add I got in the mail offering 15% off, touching soap dispensers is where you pick up like half your daily germs? And in your own house too!

I can totally get with that when I'm cutting up chicken. Though it has been a long time since I cut up meat without rubber gloves. Ah, if only they could see me now. I went from Texas ranch living to being afraid of raw meat.

I'm not going to brag about being productive today because I woke up tired. I'm not productive. I feel over-whelmed and furthermore I did something hugely stupid and I offered to sew something. I thought worse case scenario I've got a needle and thread, right? I didn't think it would be hard because we have this little  The "thing" in question is a banner for the opening day ceremonies of Little League - TOMORROW MORNING.
The banner will be used once, so why should I care if I just staple it together?
I distinctly remember my mother teaching me to sew. I distinctly remember home-ec class. Though after trying to thread our sewing machine (one I got for Celia over the holidays year before  last - so she could make herself a quilt - I even bought her a quilt kit) I realized I had apparently over-fixated on stitching myself to death with the scary sewing machine needle and under-fixated on where the thread goes.
The under thread was actually what was throwing me. Why do I not remember under-thread in any of my mother's lectures?
Celia threaded the damn thing last night (that's right, I'm the older generation, relying on my younger daughter to walk and talk me through all this bright and fizzy modern technology) but it turns out it wasn't her fault it was something to do with a broken tension rod. This is why you take things out of the box and use them straight away, because nearly 18 months later you probably don't know how to return it for one with a not broken tension rod. Thingy.

So my usual savior came over and showed me how to use hem-tape. Stitchwitch. Because it was rocket-SCIENCE and the whole 3 steps of it utterly confused me. Hey look, I never claimed to be a domestic-type. People make that mistake about me a lot. They confuse staying at home with a lot of kids with being somehow house/sewing/craft savvy.

So there. I don't care if you're laughing, I don't see you hemming anything.
Now, because I've decided to continue with this whole high tech thing, I'm going to staple the decoration on it. Staple. I might use duct-tape too. Hey, I grew up in Texas, by the end of this we'll be lucky if there isn't baling wire in there somewhere. Actually, I was thinking I could string some baling wire across the top to make the frame of it a little stronger.


In the meantime, doing the laundry every day turns out to be a mistake because I forgot that to do that you have to commit to putting it away every day too!
I'm feeling over-whelmed because it wasn't spring and then it was, and now I'm feeling really rushed about getting the garden sorted. I mean at least it is the desert and it isn't like I'm going to be choked with weeds any second now. However, the forsythia bloomed last week and everyone knows what that means and I actually woke up in the middle of the night to wonder if I'd waited too long to sew the marigold seeds. Part of that is because I've been vacillating between marigold and cactus. I'm not a fan of cactus as a decorator. If pressed I'd claim that the cactus was there in my random effort to xeriscape and not at all because I feel passive-aggressive angst towards the idiots who park on my curb, trample my flowers and let their dogs pee on my mailbox. (we live across the street from a park, and the weekend party crowd as well as the soccer Moms can be less than caring about my pathetic landscaping attempts). "Wouldn't the cactus look a wee out of place with all that grass you insist on growing in the front - wouldn't it?" You ask. Well, yes, yes it would.

I'm also feeling over-whelmed because it feels like the dust is stalking me and the stains on the carpet are actually turning me against owning carpet again ever. Yet we can't afford to do away with the carpet (though I'm seriously toying with just pulling it up and painting the concrete) and put in laminate or tile or something less attractive to red finger paint. I'm bemused by the fact that every time I notice the red, finger painted carpet stain I think of my friend who told me they had a "red popsicle rule" in her house and rather than making me think, - what could I ban my children from having that would save time on cleaning and or living like my entire house is a Jackson Pollock painting I think to myself "mmmmm red popsicles...."
Pathetic, seriously. I have some in the freezer too.


I bought caulk (caulk is cheap, it turns out it is some thousand dollars cheaper than re-tiling - damn!) and I fully intend on re-caulking the bathroom because it was spotty with mold when we bought the house and I'm terrified of mold growing behind the tiles.

Oh and I'm feeling over-whelmed because I opened the garage yesterday. Really, in reality, what was I thinking? Why did I do that? My plan was to never go in the garage again and just have Brian bring me one or two things at a time to sort. Because every time I open the garage I go into a full blown state of shock and my hard-wired Jewish neurotic brain strangles my strong Texas woman brain in the night (so much for the baling wire) and I find myself on the couch - with the blog - staring at a long-arm stapler and Little League banner and thinking to myself -


Hey - did you know there's cheesecake in the fridge?

• I remembered what I was going to say last week about Leif but forgot what I was going to say this week about Buttercup. 
• The thought on Leif was that sometimes it is the unplanned that turns out to be the most amazing, in this case a gift.
• I saw the most beautiful rain forest book I ever saw a couple years ago, then it went on sale, so I bought it. I gave it to the very next child to have a birthday, that was Leif. The book has become his favorite. Treasured, to the point that we've read the 300 pages of it over and over and he carries it around with him. 
• Keep in mind this is a coffee table book, it is half the size of himself
• He stares at the pages, talks about this is what it is like in Asia and these are the things that grow there. 
• He has more rain forest animals memorized than anyone I know. 
• This is followed only by his love affair with dinosaurs. Particularly Big Al.
• I would hazard that Leif has seen the Big Al movie more than almost any other living person. 
• Leif has every detail of Big Al memorized. 
• I realized today that I will own a pass to the nearest natural history museum until the last of my children out-grow this love affair. 
• When we bought the pass it was after a year of vacillating because as adults we vaguely believed a small natural history museum was a one-trick-pony. However, week after week of our children begging to go back we realized we needed the pass.
• The pass has paid for itself at least 10 times this year, the pass cost $75 for our family. We have been to the museum so many times that by paying as day guests we'd have bought the pass at least 10 times over. 
• How many times did we buy the pass before we actually broke down and bought the pass?
• Who is complaining? I've always loved that children love natural history. I mean the only thing cooler than dinosaurs is space and this place has both!
• Speaking of "natural history" the new computer lab section is actually a favorite of my children and today I found out why. 
• After movies play in the largest room in the computer lab section the screen turns into a massive 20 foot tall and 40 foot wide pong game. My children discovered two controllers built in at either side of the room. 
• My favorite part is that the entire back row of seats double as speakers and if you sit in them, interested in the show or not the sound vibrates through your body. 
• Some of my truly happiest memories are of one of the family farms, the one in Coz. Ne. Time seemed to have an entirely different relativity there. I wish I could replicate a place like that for my own children.
• I dearly miss my Uncle Ted's voice. 
• How stream of consciousness does it get, thoughts on Thursdays?
• Through some fit of madness I offered to sew something for someone. That's the definition of madness in case you were wondering. 
• I just watched Celia spend 5 minutes to unscuccesfully try and put an ironing board down. Ah, domestic innocence. 
• So there

He brought me strawberries. That's where we came in.
I took one out of the box and it was - it was - it was as big as a desert plate.
I wasn't quite sure what to do, I was torn between laughing and crying. Keep in mind my great grandmother has been dead 13 years now. I have no idea if the strawberry was GM, though most things are these days. Even Whole Foods has whored out to some degree. So I have a hard time believing that this early in the year the strawberry was au naturel, when it was actually that big. There were only a few in the 2lb punnet because they were so freaking huge.
I was punchy. One of my best friends was over. (I won't name names because she has a reputation to protect but she knows who she is). I just wanted to figure out which ISO on my camera would do justice to the bizarre strawberries. Really, that's all I wanted. One thing led to another...

The kids had already eaten the biggest of them, before they ate them all I wanted to get a picture...

For the average person, I'm sure they look quite appetizing

This one had a personality all to itself, it wasn't a far stretch to imagine how superior this strawberry felt, both to other strawberries and well to all other fruit in general

Which is probably why the tomato had to die - as well as the guys to the left who got in the way

The unholy alliance between drinks that have added corn syrup and when strawberries go bad

At some point guerilla warfare took over completely, as an impartial journalist, there was simply nothing I could do

This was a still taken from the video they asked me to send to the media, the last remaining hostages are in the colander

the people's rebellion, capture, trial and dispatch of the guerilla leader

The authorities arrive - where were they to begin with in all this?

The bystanders, the bodies, THE HORROR, THE HORROR

This sorta thing always draws a crowd

"Well it looks like we're done here" - "One has to wonder how these things happen?" - "America is going to hell in a handbasket"

Look, say what you want - the strawberries really were massive