In the meantime, check out Cranky Uncle Stefan's Daily Monsters on his 344 design blog.
I always enjoy darkening a doorstep knowing that Stefan and my husband's Aunt Tula will be inside.
Main Activities: eating, preparing for eating, talking about eating.
Life is good.
I am hastily making plans to pack and leave for Salt Lake for the holiday. We leave either tonight or early tomorrow.
I’ve never traveled with the Bean, so I’m sure that I’ll be overpacking and everyone will laugh at me. Oh well.
Because of the holiday out-of-towniness, Bean’s 7 month newsletter will most likely be delayed.
I bought Bean a set of toy keys earlier this month. They were supposed to make an annoying jangly sound when dropped, and a toot! toot! vroom! business when certain buttons were pushed.
After about five minutes of play, Bean somehow busted it such that it made no noise. At first I thought "Crap. Now I'll have to return it and get another one." Then I realized "Am I NUTS? This thing makes no noise now. It's PERFECT."
Bean still liked the toy, sans-jangle and TOOT TOOT VROOM!
But then, the other day, she mysteriously fixed it. It jangles and TOOT TOOTs again.
TOOT TOOT VROOM TOOT TOOT VROOM TOOT TOOT VROOM TOOT TOOT VROOM TOOT TOOT VROOM TOOT TOOT VROOM TOOT TOOT VROOM TOOT TOOT VROOM TOOT TOOT VROOM TOOT TOOT VROOM TOOT TOOT VROOM!
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Interesting reading for just mothers out there:
The part that hit home for me:
...Hirshman is right about a lot of things. Yes, domestic work--even caring for cherubic children--is often boring, repetitive, demeaning, unfulfilling, isolating. Yes, my financial future has become unquestionably less secure, my future employment prospects dimmer, than if I had always worked full time. And, perhaps worst of all, I find I am now the primary caretaker of the butter."Never figure out where the butter is," Hirshman warns--her metaphor for "never take primary responsibility for managing the household." It's based on a passage by writer Nora Ephron in which a man opens the fridge and asks his wife where the butter is, while looking directly at it.
"'Where's the butter?' actually means butter my toast, buy the butter, remember when we're out of butter," Hirshman writes, paraphrasing Ephron. "Next thing you know you're quitting your job at the law firm because you're so busy managing the butter."
Staying home with my children required me to morph into a reluctant household manager, responsible for most of the quotidian details of family life: shopping for birthday presents and school supplies, arranging to get the dishwasher fixed and the taxes prepared, making school lunches and remembering which kid won't eat ham and which won't eat turkey, keeping track of appointments and playdates and Little League games and the never-ending flow of school papers … countless tasks, tiny and thankless and so nearly invisible that the only time they even enter my husband's consciousness is when I forget to do them.
ooohhh....quotidian details....that phrase makes me tingly.
I voted today. The old lady volunteers were very nice, and gave Bean an "I Voted" sticker, which she promptly ate.
Some ballot issues are very controversial (Smoking bans, marijuana legalizations) and some don't have much to do with my life (dropping sales tax on tractor sales). Dim and I took the time to read the sample ballot and attached arguments carefully and discussed what we thought was best.
So basically, we think that you can smoke pot, but not in public restaurants (and NOT in Bean's room - again) and that Farmer Joe has to pay sales tax on his tractor just like we do for our own business equipment. Both purchases should be made a little bit easier by raising the minimum wage. Education should not necessarily be the first thing funded at legislative sessions, and the Governor shouldn't get to appoint his cronies to the Board of Regents.
Oh, and that freaky Scientologist helicopter guy that's running for Sherriff? No way, man.