Bibliomama

I read once that "making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." The website thinkexist.com attributes the quote to Elizabeth Stone. I can't quite figure out who Elizabeth Stone is for sure -- she's probably Elizabeth Stone the author, but who knows? Maybe Elizabeth Stone the photographer, Elizabeth Stone the archaeologist (concentrating on the Mesopotamian) or Elizabeth Stone the marathon runner cut loose with a great bon mot one day. At any rate... This week-end, my heart was in a bit of a batting slump. It's hard when your heart gets up to bat and everyone says "Whoa, it's Allison's heart -- back up! Home run!". It makes my heart tense up and forget to rely on its muscle memory and suddenly what usually happens smoothly and gracefully turns all choppy and awkward. My heart struck out for one entire game. Fortunately, my heart then pitched a shut-out...

Really looks like she knows what she's doing, huh? (For the most part, she doesn't have a clue). Sitting on the bench somehow turned into lolling in the shade (over 30 degrees and humid). Well THAT was refreshing. For once she runs home without clutching the batting helmet to her head. Did we mention she got FOUR runs in this game? AND we beat the team that creamed us last time? Still not sure how. But yay.

It's hot.  It's hot as hell, and my husband isn't here, which means I'm the designated parent for baseball every night, in the blistering sweltering life-sapping heat, hurling water at my kid every ten minutes and hoping none of them keel over from heat stroke, while wishing fervently that I didn't have to be wearing a bra because no bra is anything but a well-wrought instrument of torture in thirty-plus heat and humidity.  That said, Eve got four runs and some brilliant man brought a spray bottle, and we won 18-8 (VERY unusual), so really I have no cause to complain, or to throw my other kid to the wolves in a blatant sop to the blog gods because I have no time left before reading Eve a story and then reading in bed beside her because she can't POSSIBLY fall asleep without me. And it's really unforgivable and if he ever finds out I'm toast. So I'm absolutely categorically NOT going to tell you about going upstairs and seeing through the half-o...

For sad, twisted, hormone-induced bitchy funny, see yesterday's post . Or there's this. From my Mom, and therefore not a patch on the aneurysm-inducing filth over at Crazy Town . A Home Depot Story ! Charlie was installing a new door and found that one of the hinges was missing. He asked his wife Mary if she would go to Home Depot and pick up a hinge. Mary agreed to go. While she was waiting for the manager to finish serving a customer, her eye caught a beautiful bathroom faucet. When the manager was finished, Mary asked him, "How much is that faucet?" The manager replied, "That's a gold plated faucet and the price is $500.00. Mary exclaimed, "My goodness, that is a very expensive faucet. It's certainly out of my price bracket." She then proceeded to describe the hinge that Charlie had sent her to buy. The manager said that he had them in stock and went into the storeroom to get one. From the storeroom the manager yell...

Anyone who read my last post and thought 'go away and have a freakin' frozen yogurt or something and come back when you're in a better mood' is going to be disappointed. Although it turns out my yawning existential Nietzchean crisis is probably just PMS, which is equally as annoying but somewhat less glamorous. I've eaten my body weight in salted cashews in the last four days. I walk around cooking or cleaning the kitchen and eating cashews every time I pass the container, then I put the lid on the container so I won't eat any more, than ten seconds later my hand hits the lid and I wonder who the asshole is who put the lid on the cashew container because the cashews are the only thing keeping me from ripping my face off and throwing it in the dishwasher that never washes anything. I took Eve to baseball last night and narrowly managed to restrain myself from bludgeoning the kid that spent every moment on the bench kicking at the gravel until a solid wall of ...

Things are bad. Things are really bad. Oh, that's inaccurate. Things are fine. Things are great. I'm bad though. I feel like I've slipped sideways just enough to not fit properly in my life. I can look down on it from the outside and see that it's a good life, but when I'm back inside it I can't feel it on my skin. I went for a great walk today. Eve was home sick but Matt was working from home so I walked over to the drug store and grocery store for inhalers and lettuce and salad dressing and berries and kleenex. It was warm but not sweltering, I didn't think of it as manadatory exercise so I walked at a comfortable pace and looked at people's flowers. I left my ipod behind and looked around at stuff (there are stores in that plaza I never knew were there). I came home and looked over the first part of my new course, which is another point I'm not terribly impressed with myself on. I always thought if I went back to school I would just pu...

Flipping through the TV listings on Digital Cable I come across: Rules of Engagement: Audrey is falsely accused of sexual harassment. Comedy. Riiight. Cause nothing says a laugh a minute like a hostile workplace environment and having your reputation ruined by trumped-up allegations. Gimme a W. Gimme a T. Gimme a F. ????

I'm cranky. We had a lovely visit with family on the week-end and went out to see the great-grandparents on Monday (hooky-playing kids and all) which was wonderful, but I'm still coughing like a tubercular opera heroine and not sleeping well and hopped up on inhaled substances (prescribed) and generally feeling less than stellar. I didn't go into the school library on Tuesday which is my usual day so I could clean up my house and self-medicate in peace, but I didn't feel that much better when I went in today. Today was also the day that all the classes that missed their library period on Monday and Tuesday because of a software upgrade and a spontaneous Chinese delegation, so it was fortunate (for the library tech) that I was there since we were slammed with two classes at once for most of the day. A school library overflowing with spring-feverish first-to-sixth graders is not the place to be when you're not feeling top-notch. I was snappish. I was curt and sn...

I'm guest-posting today over in Crazy Town (funny how I feel right at home there). Notice how I said that all nonchalant-like, and not as if I'm hopping up and down with barely repressed excitement at my VERY FIRSTEST GUEST POST EVER (she's probably betting no one really reads blogs on Mondays.) I'm hoping the different setting will make my whining and ranting sound fresh and rejuvenated. Hope -- the thing with feathers that perches in the soul (Emily Dickinson). And then gets blown away by a strong wind and falls in a mud puddle and gets ripped to pieces by rabid bunnies (me).

Yesterday I was in my daughter's class for another Scientists in the Schools session. So far I've done Insects twice for both kids in J.K. (playdough bugs, head, thorax, abdomen -- I think we still have one somewhere), Forces with Angus in grade three (physics - hard) and Pulleys and Levers for Angus last term (in French -- hard). Smarter than a fifth grader? Well, yesterday was The Five Senses with Eve's grade one class, and I hit that one out of the park, but everyone from the second grade up can pretty much kick my butt all over town. I had the Hearing Station. Did you know that animals who live in the desert generally have big ears because they lose body heat through their ears and it keeps them cooler, and animals who live in the arctic have smaller ears because ipso facto ergo hence? Go ahead, tell me you knew that, I won't believe you. The kids didn't know it either, so they're still not smarter than me. We looked at blown-up pictures of animal ...

I just read this over at Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia's blog (I read it on a recommendation and tried not to love it, because I'm a contrary and perverse creature, but I failed. It's lovable, dammit). Apparently a St. Louis sex blogger who blogged anonymously and whose blog mentioned nothing about her job, was fired because her boss somehow came across her blog and was disgusted. That's it -- you're fired because you blog about sex and I find that disgusting. 'Scuse me? No, really, EXCUSE ME? Yeah. I know. The internet is forever. Anything you say online can and will be used to flagellate you by any asshole who comes across it in the present and future. And if your boss fires you for a stupid-ass reason that doesn't happen to be a stupid-ass reason that falls under various categories of discrimination, you have to take it up the (butt-plugged or not) ass (yeah, that's a little crude for me, but it's germane to the plot so I'm leavin...

I'm still not sure about writing this post. It seems stupid that I feel like I have to write this post. But it's been spinning around like a nasty little sharp-toothed spinny thing in my head for a few days, particularly in the shower, and shaving my legs is unpleasant enough without the nasty spinny stuff, and hey -- Crazy Mayor Lady asked for a Mayhem guest post, so where better to spin off my stuff? I read this article a few days ago. I read Suburban Bliss long before I read any other blogs, and I had heard a bit about Michele McBee, who is apparently just the epitome of churlish, venomous, ungrammatical, unimaginative bitcherness (when bitterness marries bitchiness). I don't read Suburban Bliss all that often anymore, not because it's not every bit as funny and real as it's always been, but because Melissa Summers is a total success who doesn't need or notice my readership or comments, and I prefer to spend the majority of my blog-reading time on pe...

Eve and Angus eating fortune cookies. Eve: 'Can you read me your fortune?' Angus: 'You are kind-hearted, hospital...hospitable, cheerful and well-liked.' (me snickering as I manage not to add 'in bed'.) Eve: 'What does that even mean?' Angus: 'It means I'm awesome.'

Spring baseball starts tomorrow. Eve plays Monday, Angus plays Tuesday, they both play Wednesday. (Crap, I shouldn't be blogging, I should be making freezer meals. Oh well.) Angus is also glued to televised baseball every chance he gets. ("What happened? Someone hit a two-run homer? Dad, (insert name) made a great catch!") I was watching with him for a few minutes while I ate my yogurt. The pitcher threw the ball, then turned towards the camera and... did some stuff. Me: "Oh, nice." Angus: "I know, good strike huh?" Me: "Actually I was referring to the fact that he spat while the camera was on him. Directly after grabbing his crotch. Classy." Angus (indignantly): "Hey, he's got a jock on, remember." Me: "Fair enough. And the spitting?" Angus: "Umm... that's to keep his mouth warm. For yelling at the umpire." And I thought French immersion was bad for having us speak two different ...