A Sucker for the Bux

yeah...we stopped for Super Secret Hot Chocolate.
Again.

You're digging the Sleeping Beauty Princess Dress, right?



Apparantly, we were supposed to bring Halloween costumes to change into today, not wear them. As The Monkey and I are divesting her of crown, coat and gloves this morning, no less than six little friends of hers gasp indignantly, whirling on their parents screeching "Mooooo-oooom! Sophie got to wear her costume!!!"

I just sort of tossed them all an apologetic look, shrugged, and crept quickly out the back. Before I did? Monkey looked my way with the most triumphant shit-eating grin on her face.

I winked at her.

Unexpected Opportunities

So with the residential fate of The Munchkins still hanging in the balance... and future landing sites still unsure...I've turned to an old standby to help me through the panic and neurosis of planning a move: LIST MAKING!

I currently have four different lists going.
I have a KEEP list
a DONATE list
a PACK ME NOW list
and a PACK ME LAST MINUTE list

I also have subgenres for each list by floor of current house...and again by room.

How do you conquer one neurosis? Clobber it over the head with OCD, apparently.

Also, I'm frittering away my free time daydreaming about all of the new decorative possibilites that come with a new place.

What size will the new rooms be? Should I make all new curtains? Will the kids want to design their own room or will they let me? Can I paint the walls? I wonder how the new place will feel about a wall of chalkboard paint? I wonder how expensive DIY chair rails are? Which fabric should I use for the new throw pillows I'm dreaming up? Will I have room for a craft corner? nook? desk+wall?

And, because I know in the end I'll simply be moving my current decor along with me, this seems a safe place to ponder...

tunes on a rainy day

kind of gorgeous...

Goodbye I'm Gone

~ Another Robot Sunset

The Best Problem

decisions...decisions...

Duct Tape Dress Form: The Follow Up...

Some Items of Note about Making your Own Duct Tape Dress Form:

From now on, when projects recommend the presence of two people? I fully intend to respect that.

I was stuck for just long enough to start to panic last night.

Then I had to pee.

* Saran Wrap is an excellent insulator. I lugged my little space heater up the third floor last night, thinking it'd get chilly when I stripped down to make my duct tape dress form? Nope. One layer of Saran Wrap into it and I was good to go!

* The sound of Duct Tape being unwound from the roll is excrutiatingly loud. I was terrified I was going to wake up my entire household of toddlers with each scritch and scratch and tear.

* One should NOT forgot one's camera downstairs when duct taping oneself upstairs. Stairs are IMPOSSIBLE in a duct tape dress

* I have a great ass. I had no idea!

* I have the weirdest little pooch from having three babies. I mean, I know my pants don't really fit the same as they did six years prior, and I haven't had "abs" to speak of since I was a gymnast... It's like a little pot belly. Sideways. I kind of get a kick out of it. It doesn't look nearly as odd from the front as I feel like it does looking down at it.

* There is STILL a spot right in the middle of my back, just between my shoulder blades that is extremely uncomfortable to reach. I can do it, but not well.

* Saran Wrap + Duct Tape is better at slimming your form than Spanx will ever be. I wish I could wrap up before getting dressed to go out all the time! The time and level of difficulty in getting into and out of this get-up is awfully prohibitive though...

Pictures to Come!

Promise!

Counting Blue Cars...

And sometimes...just when you think it can't get worse? It does.

And you wreck the car.

Into an SUV filled with five 18-year-olds all glammed up for a birthday dinner downtown (where they NEVER GO! And this is exactly why! Ugh!) just itching for a fight.

(To be fair? They did STOP at a green light to make a left turn. Which I would have seen had I not glanced over my right shoulder and clicked my turn signal on to get over to avoid their Daddy's SUV in the first place...)

BUT. The Cavalier will persevere...evenutally.

For now, The Munchkins and I are back to walking to school & work. Which is acceptable because I can do the home --> School #14 --> Shalom DayCare --> work route in about an hour-fifteen to an hour-and-a-half if we're walking College Campus style (that'd be briskly and with purpose, tyvm)

And, the additional walk-time allowed for a quick stop in at the friendly neighborhood Starbucks for a grande hot chocolate for The Monkey and I to split.

And we sat on the stone bench outside the cookie-cutter coffee shop on Mass Ave. and watched the easy ebb & flow of early morning pedestrians, and Monkey looked up at me with a big hot-chocolate mustache and smiled and said: "Mommy? Can we do this again tomorrow?"

So. okay. maybe it's not all bad.

In fact, as dire of a mess as my life's in right now (car-less, apartment hunting, buried in clutter) the stuff that matters (walking to the library, spending the afternoon reading and carving pumpkins, strolling to school hand-in-hand, enjoying some one-on-one time with the youngest) is making it all worthwhile.

Duct Tape Dress Form

I'm biting the bullet.

I have gone as far as I can go in my little dining room sweatshop withOUT a dress form.
However, I just can't bite the $160 dress form bullet.
Mostly because I don't HAVE $160.

So I'm making one.
Out of duct tape.
I found the best written tutorial here:
duct tape dress form

So...yeah...
saran wrap [check!]
two rolls of duct tape [check!]
small roll of colored tape [check!]
stuffing & carboard for interior [check!]

You've all been warned.
If you get a call from me and I dissolve into a fit of giggles it's because I've gotten myself stuck.
If I'm physically able, I'll take pictures.
I have a feeling it's going to be worth having photographic evidence of...

Random little bits as they flit through...

And sometimes, in the late hours of the afternoon, I miss your smile. And I'd like for you to come sit passenger-side in the car with me. And we'll chat on art and life and raising our aborted little half-families. And we'll laugh, small quiet laughs, about the way we used to be: on fire and passionate for life. And we'll settle in and slump down, slowly, under the weight of life. Drama free, clutching our cheap, diner-pot coffee with hands that used to brush and cause a spark. Our hands that are now comfortably familiar. Our hands that hug, and type, and dog-ear pages, and dial numbers synonymous with comfort and warm shoulders on which to shed tears and swap heavy loads. And I'm relieved we didn't suit in the end, because it shouldn't be a struggle, should it?

What I've learned recently would fill hollow mountains.
And what I've learned has taught me that it can be easy.
A cup of coffee. A look. A glance shared across a room. A cold beer, sweating down over your wrists, on the front porch. These things are as easy as breathing. They are organic. They are not forced. They are not whispered trysts in stairwells and exotic rendezvous, but they are real. And that's something these days. Amazingly, it's more than I ever thought it could be.

And I find myself oddly enamoured of lazy Sundays, and football, of all things; the way the pregame shows sound while I lay on the couch, semi-comatose, eyes closed, curled up behind you while you check your fantasy stats. And of long showers and breakfast sandwhiches and slurpees and aquariums. And I remember that the heart is such an odd thing, and how something so simple as a smile can start it healing up again.

Blue Ridge Mountain Blues

ohhh...Avett Brothers... *le sigh*



speaking of the blues...I have to move.
I am simultaneously under- and overwhelmed at the prospect.
So, I made a list, ready?

Pros:

Starting Fresh

Clean closets...for at least a day...

An excuse to buy more storage bins
(for which I have an odd affinity for)

No more ulcers over random mystery mouse poop!
(i hope. oh god do i hope)

Cons:

Packing

Weeding out the "keeps" versus the "throw-aways"

Having to uproot the kiddos

Packing

Traumatizing the Munchkins

Unpacking.

Throwing things away
(this is tantamount to abandonment for a packrat.)
(No, I do NOT belong on Hoarders. Shut. Up.)

Did I mention packing?

*sigh*

Packing.

I am not enthused.

Growing Up

and apparantly I've been keeping my head in the clouds for too long

and now I've started drowning

so no more blogging for a while

until I get my shit in order

Blushing over Library Books

Do you know what I hate?

Returning library books late, knowing that the next time I'll have to go in, look a librarian in the eye and fess up to returning said book late, to pay my fine.

Do you know what I hate even more than that?
When that library book is a romance novel with a ridiculous title.

I can count on both hands the number of times I've actually checked out a romance novel from my library. It usually happens when I'm either (a)reallllly depressed about something or (b)have the flu. I'm not entirely sure what it says about my personality that a bottle of gatorade, a box of saltines, and the verbal equivalent of someone's throbbing something-or-other is what buoy's my moods...nor am I honestly sure it means anything...but I bet Myers-Briggs would have a thing or two to say about it.

And do you know what else I occasionally ponder? Why is it that the cerebral incarnation of porn always, and I mean always ends in some medieval marriage or life-mating or some sort of ridiculousness? Have we really not traveled the landscape of sexual equality far enough to have these novels include sex for sex's sake? Or am I just reading the wrong books?

Regardless, I still had to hang my head in shame in front of Vivian the Librarian at the downtown imcpl earlier this week when I shuffled up to the desk to pay my $2.25 fine for returning "I Kissed an Earl" two weeks late. I vaguely made eye contact with the fuse box cover just over Viv's left shoulder when she read off the other books I still had checked out on my card (such gems as "To Dare a Duke" and "The Wicked Wickerleys").

Why can't I take ownership of these books? Why can't I make my way to the checkout counter without the covers turned upside-down on the top of my pile of books, half-naked men and partially unclothed slutty demi-mondes hiding under The Purse Makers Bible? Ehh...Probably for the same reason that I still feel a little flushed when I buy a pack of condoms or a box of tampons at the drug store. I just can't help it. It's my natural instinct, despite all the forced bravado, to be embarrassed about sex and the inner workings of my own twisted mind... Go Figure.

Sugar Rush

You know that first intense rush of flavor, the one that makes your toes curl a bit inside your Chucks on a Friday afternoon, when taking a Pepsi break?

That means I don't drink nearly enough soda.

Autumn

Sometimes, the Midwest just kicks ass.

I'd like to think I'd fit in well somewhere warm, on a beach somewhere.

I'd like to think I could easily make the adjustment from Midwest downtowner to NYC upscale hipster with grace and style.

But mostly I get my rocks off by spending a day on a Dairy Farm, listening to Polka Boy, doing the chicken dance, drinking dark IPAs and piling the kids onto a hayride. I like curling up on the couch with the extended fam. at my sister-in-law's house. And I like having a bowl of chili, game on in the background, and the Munchkins running around in the backyard. I'd trade all the sun and the waves and beaches of the south; All the concerts and the museums and the underground clubs of the big cities; if I could just get everyone I love into one place and have enough pumpkin pie for everyone.

Twirl

Lots of blogging today... ho hum... it's Friday...
Saturday is going to be a day for domestics.
I'm going to de-clutterfy my house.
Maybe if I do...my life will follow suit.
Sunday will be a day for twirling.
Oktoberfest out at Traders Point with Polka Boy & hayrides & everyone bringing their kiddos. And after? Colts game with the family and a giant pot of chili... Now I just have to decide...what do I bring for my dessert contribution?

Go all out or Go Home.

Okay. TELL me this shit isn't funny.

We're hosting some corporate big wigs Monday and Tuesday for a couple days of intensive online sales training from Yahoo.com



They told us in their best kindergarten teacher voices to decorate the pods in purple...
Everyone else is stylish and tasteful. Refined ribbons and streamers, balloons and Yahoo in script everywhere. Our pod looks like Barney threw up. It's awesome.



One of my coworkers said it best:
Go all in or Go home.
We're getting dirty looks from everyone on the sales floor that isn't about to pee themselves from laughing. I'd call that a success.
I LOVE the people I work with. LOVE.



did I mention I love my team? I do. a lot.

Expectations

i am a breathing time machine

love the avett brothers. love them.