dear prospective buyer

dear prospective buyer,

i am glad that you find my house to be lovely and that it meets all of your needs. but you may not take immediate occupancy and have your "people" wire my "people" the money from your account in venezuala. best of luck to you.

take care,
home owner

dream house

j. and i have been at this for awhile. we have been held up here and here. oh and dont forget here. right and here too. you get the picture. at the end of last week we decided to lower our new lower price some more- apparantly that was warranted because we have practically had non-stop showings ever since. nothing like taking up a second residence at the mall because you have to kill a few hours at least once a day. this afternoon the guy at star.bucks asked "didnt you just order that this morning?" something is amiss - guess i need to start circulating to the other one in the mall.

trouble is j. and i dont agree on what THE dream house is. we have a collective short list of 3-4 houses. my #1 is his #4 and vice versa. not sure if this means we havent found the dream house yet. talk amongst yourselves.

pale in comparison

a great friend of ours is in a band in upstate new york, and here is a new song they are singing. lyrics below in case you have a hard time hearing over the raucous laughter. as i said to my mom over the weekend, i think i will get some tees made for the boys that say "my mama is voting for obama"



Ode to Sarah Palin
The El Caminos
Lyrics by Chuck Donovan
Music by El Caminos, with apologies to Robert Earl Keen (See “Copenhagen” for the reason)


When I think of what I want out of my Vice President,
A pit bull wearing lipstick would sure be heaven sent
Especially if she’s from somewhere I can send a drill
If Hillary won’t do it, you know that Sarah will!

Sarah Palin, she comes from Alaska
Sarah Palin, she sure has a pretty smile
Sarah Palin, was caused McCain to ask ya
Sarah Palin, is he really that senile?

Then I watched her speak at that big ol convention
And I had some thoughts that frankly were too dark for me to mention
As she spit her hate and bile all over my tv
I can’t believe that she was Miss Congeniality!

Sarah Palin, was mayor of her home city
Sarah Palin, where they cook that crystal meth
Sarah Palin, but don’t you think she pretty? Vote for
Sarah Palin, something that rhymes with crystal meth! (OR “ain’t no VPILF”!)

Since that night I haven’t seen Sarah anywhere
On the Sunday morning talk shows there was no hide nor hair
Just GOP good ol boys talking loud and big
About how wrong Obama is for calling her a pig

Sarah Palin, if the shoe fits wear it
Sarah Palin, thought that wasn’t what he meant
Sarah Palin, if you actually can’t bear it
Sarah Palin, how can you be Vice President?


So on that November morning when you go to make your choice,
Remember that no matter what she says in that sweet voice
Makes up for the policies to which Sarah adheres
Let’s keep her out of Washington for the next eight years

Sarah Palin, why didn’t they vet her?
Sarah Palin, just wanted to remind you bout that crystal meth
Sarah Palin, even Romney would be better than
Sarah Palin, I really think it’s time she left!


Repeat choruses as desired, creating rhymes on the fly if you feel the need…

love ya chuck!!

a glimpse into the teenage years

sunday f. and i ran out to go to the library. he loves to read and always says yes to a trip to the library. i should have checked the hours before we left the house, but didnt, so we arrived 45 minutes before the library opened. so we re-evaluated and decided to run to the grocery store first and the library second. on the way to the grocery store we were stopped at a traffic light for a fire engine to go speeding by sirens blasting. embarrassing as i now know that this obviously is, i dared to mention to my 5 year old that a "cool fire engine" was passing by. his response went something like this. "i already saw the fire engine mommy, geez. you know, i am not 3 any more, i am 5! what are you ridiculous?!" oh boy, am i in for some fun come the teenage years!

overheard in my house recently

as the vocabulary of m. explodes, we are deciphering new words and phrases daily. lately he has begun to chant "myme, myme, myme, myme!" i have recently discovered that this means "mine!" and also "give me whatever food/drink that is you have!"

m.: myme, myme, myme, myme!!!
f.: what m.?
m.: myme, myme, myme, myme!!
f.: look m. - i am not your mommy!!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

on the way out the door to school one morning. apparantly i can be particularly charming before my coffee!

me: f. you are supposed to have your shoes on, lets go your brothers are waiting for us in the car.
f.: come on, i didnt know i was supposed to have my shoes on
me: well, did you think you were going to school without shoes?
me: lets go, close the door behind you. what do you think you live in a barn?
f: what do you live in a house with the rest of the witches?

capturing time

we are fully into the swing of fall, sadly leaving summer behind. there is nothing like snotty, drippy noses to remind you that fall is upon us. if only mother nature would agree and allow us to turn off the ac for more than one day at a time! anyway, continuing with the idea of being able to remember some of the cute antics going on, here is another installment of capturing time.

f. you have become such a big boy. i look at you these days and wonder what happened to the cute little snuggle bug of days gone by. you launch yourself off of steps, beds, couches, etc routinely. you have taken to saying the phrase "come on" incessantly. we are not sure where it came from, but you utter it at least 5 times before 8am daily and then another 546 times before your head hits the pillow again each night! as in "come on, i just told you i wanted milk!" or "come on when will dinner be ready!" and "come on i dont know where my sneakers are!" one day last week, i was sitting right here shamelessly reading perez hilton catching up on my reading at 11:30PM when i heard you coughing. nothing too odd about that, except i thought i heard it coming from downstairs. given that it was a good 4 hours past your bedtime, i was shocked when moments later you emerged from the basement to inform me that you only got to watch half of batman because the satellite went out. first and foremost, i should probably be embarrassed that at the age of 5 you utter the phrase "the satellite went out" with the same disdain that a grown man might while watching the final minutes of the super bowl. secondly, what the hell are you doing watching cartoons in the middle of the night? if i were to believe you, this was not the first time! oh wait a minute, thats the mother of the year committee calling to inform me of my nomination. brb. the good news though is that you are still young enough that when i tell you i need to snuggle, you mostly still come running!

k. you have become a monster lately. you walk around with at least one arm cocked ready to hit anyone in a 3 foot radius. what is up with this dude? poor m. is clearly taking the brunt of it. just when i am at my wits end with you, you will casually walk up and land a huge kiss square on the bookshelves in the kitchen or the picture of the camel in your ABC book. somewhere our signals are getting crossed - love your family - not the bookshelves and please not the camel! you are starting to sprinkle in a word every now and then just for good measure. and you love music. now when we sing the "clean up" song, you will stand there belting it out (replacing each word with "BLAH") while the rest of us actually go about cleaning up. you would much rather drink your milk (as well as your brothers) than actually waste time eating food. apparantly food is for throwing on the floor or putting inside of toys or somedays both. you are still a silly little kiddo and you keep a smile on my face and warmth in my heart.

m. you are currently covered in road rash from your forehead, clear down to your upper lip. the joke around here is that you have two speeds : asleep and running full force. the later often results in boo-boos. you are just living life to the fullest. last week daddy and i took you and k. to the park and you just ran around like a maniac trying everything out. daddy climbed up a high ladder with you so you could ride down the big kids twirly slide and that was it. you spent the rest of the time screaming "UP GAN UP GAN GAN UP UP" (up again). daddy would lift you up again and you would run to the slide and launch yourself down, already starting to scream "GAN UP" before your feet hit the ground. i am pretty sure you will sport at least one cast in your childhood. i love that you still run to me first when something has you down or k. is beating the crap out of you. and secretly i am glad that after k. beats you up that you are finally starting to push back a bit when he comes near you again!

love you boys!

oh monday

dear monday,

i know you historically have a bad rep. musicians have sung about about it, school children have complained about you, even the federal govt. likes to avoid you by conveniently "observing" most holidays squarely on you. as a mom of a school aged child, i came to appreciate mondays, as the day when my charges are decreased by one for a few hours. today however - not the case!

monday, tell me, why did you wake up my oldest at the ungodly hour of 3:23am? don't you know that it is no fun being awakened by a five year old who needs to sleep in your bed because his is wet. you try reasoning with a five year old at this hour and explaining that he needs new pj's because they are not *just* cold, but are in fact wet too! you try telling him that he can sleep on your floor, but not in your bed. you try convincing him, as a last resort, that he can sleep on the couch in the family room, only to be awakened 5 minutes later as a clock is thrust in your face because it is keeping him awake. you try cleaning up his puke just mere hours later and not resenting that your hour a day of me time is quickly being rescheduled for later in the week. you try settling him back in for a nap only to have him wake up two hours later professing that he feels great and is now ready to go to school. try all this on for size. i dare you monday - give it a try!

signed,
no longer a fan

girl power

this girls weekend could not have come at a better time for me. admittedly, i have been in a funk, rut, whatever you want to call it. friday morning j. called me from work to tell me that i should look into the tropical storm headed our way. he elaborated that they were talking about closing down the bay bridge for extended periods of time on the very day i needed to use it to get me to said girls weekend. i hung up the phone and immediately sent out an SOS email. "girls, we need to get out of town before they close the bridge." after about 16 phone calls, hanging up on at least as many people while i tried to answer call waiting we had it all worked out. (when exactly did i become so technilogically enept?!?) the five of us could all leave in mere hours, the night before our scheduled departure, after our 15 children were safely tucked in bed - yes i said 15! we didnt care that our arrival time would be 11:30 or so - hours after we would all normally pass out from a day jam packed with multiples activities. we were going come hell or high water. and boy did the high water come!!

we arrived in dewey a little before midnight, poured ourselves a drink, slapped on some makeup and headed out for a night on the town. we joked that we had not left the house at midnight in a very long time, especially when the intended destination was someplace other than nighttime pediatrics or the ER. we crammed ourselves into one of the two hotspots in town and danced our butts off until last call - then we danced some more until they turned the dreaded lights on! the next day was basically rinse and repeat! heavy on the rinse!

it was a fantastic weekend, with some amazing women! if only the restorative powers of a hotel room packed full of estrogen could somehow be bottled. thanks girls - you rock!

dear asshat

dear asshat,

all i have to say to you, the asshat that stole my wallet, is that i hope you enjoy being questioned by the police!! when you have to resort to using my library card to make a buck or whatever it is you are doing on this little shopping spree of yours i think you have reached a new low. library card - really?? i am shocked that you even know where the library is located!! i can relate to the late night munchies and drive thru choice of wendy's - i mean those burgers are fresh, never frozen. i can even appreciate the filling up your gas tank at royal farms - i mean gas prices are outrageous these days. heck, even i am jealous about the no spending limit trip through super.walmart. but the library - really??

guess what asshat, people who work in libraries are generally upstanding citizens and tend to take note when a tattoocovereddreadlockwearing freak such as yourself presents themselves with a huge fricken stack of things to check out and then cant provide any id to go along with the libary card. guess what - i beat you to the library and already asked them to put a hold on my card. you see asshat, people who work in libraries also tend to be very detail oriented and are used to doing research and taking notes and sometimes have a photographic memory. lets just say that every tattoo that was visible on your grimy body has now been noted in great detail. now we have a witness to the fact that you are presenting yourself as someone you are not. library card - really? i hope it was worth it! and by the way, since you spent more than $500 of mine, we are no longer talking petty crime - we are talking felony. i do hope you enjoy the visit from the police. somehow i suspect it wont be your first or last visit from them.

sleep tight asshat!

love,
you me

this time last year

every once and awhile i like to take a look back at where i found myself this time last year. having this blog, makes it especially easy. some days my life feels full of drama and i am just longing for simple, more calm days. i know thats probably not feasible given all that is going on. but when i look at this time last year, i realize the boys were just learning to hold their heads up and we were just preparing for the vacation from hell. it seems crazy given that they are walking and running everywhere these days. f. was just taking his first bus ride last year, and now he seems like an old pro at it. i dont really know how we got here from there.

i have been feeling disjointed somehow lately. these last two weeks i have been ignoring the banging at my door, i refuse to let him in - that ugly ugly monster, known as depression. i keep chalking it up to things like my cycle or the fact that my identity was ripped off. enough already - leave me alone. no one is home! i know i am going to have to face it head on sooner or later and really do something about it. for now though i just find myself saying "la, la, la, i cant hear you - cant you see the no soliciting sign" as if that is going to make a difference.

its girl weekend this saturday - we are going to the beach - the perfect place to stick my head in the sand - no?!