lolsecretz

It's lolcats meets postsecrets. Too funny.
(Confession--I love postsecrets.com.)
lolsecretz.

Jordan all ready for school

Jamie, you are a very good lunch packer, Jamie

Hey, Jamie? Your lunch was delicious.

Bo, you are a very bad dog, Bo.

I forgot and left my briefcase on the couch this morning (or as Jordan likes to call it, my "man purse") and that meant I had to drive all the way back home from work and get it. Annoying!

Also annoying was the fact that Bo (or "the damn dog" as he shall hereafter be referred to) pulled open my briefcase and fished out the two granola bars that I had thoughtfully stowed away for lunch and ate them. Then he pulled a stick of butter off the counter and ate that too.

I congratulate you on your ability to operate a zipper, Bo. BUT YOU ARE A VERY BAD DOG.

Claudia's latest art project

She had to do a cereal box in realist, surrealist, cubist and abstract styles.

Some Day

Two things Europa crept into my consciousness this week.

One was planted there a couple of years ago, and filed away in the back of my brain the way I do with lots of things I don't need just yet. And certainly, these are going to have to be filed back away for quite a while, but I thought I would share before shoving them back where they belong for now. The second one is brand new, although I'm quite astonished that I'd never heard of it before. Incomplete education? You have no idea.

The first is Les Catacombs. I want the authorized *and* the less-than-authorized tour. Jamie is always up for an adventure and we have the most fun in museums together, so I know we would have a really amazing time. In fact, we were once followed by a guard throughout an entire museum. I think he could sense I sometimes like to touch things. Or. Maybe he saw me actually touch something.

I know.

That's wrong.

The second thing is the Temple de la Sagrada Família in Barcelona. I *love* colored glass. That gorgeous blue Chagall at the Art Institute (which I did *not* touch) in Chicago had me swooning




so the photos of these windows have me breathing fast.



The architecture is unsettling. At first blush, when you look at photos of this church from a distance it's same old, same old, familiar and expected. But then when you look closer, it's all new, even though it's not (very) modern. They've been working on it since the 1860's or so and it's still not finished.

Oh, and speaking of an incomplete education, I just saw this, La Pieta, for the first time recently. I saw a photo and could Not stop looking at it. Look at the fabric.



So I guess we should add Vatican to the travel itinerary. I wonder if I'll be able to stop looking at it? Maybe Jamie could distract me with some Vatican trivia. He once told me they used to whack dead popes in the head with a silver hammer to make sure they were dead. That's a pretty funny/macabre image. Or maybe promises of finding the Popemobile would do it. I wonder if I could touch it?

The weekend

Girlies have been standardized testing all this week, so no homework to speak of and that's been *nice*. Thursday night I had to work late, unexpectedly, so I missed my GNO with the wiccans.

Friday night we decided to make pizza for dinner and that was fun, if not the best tasting. We used the premade dough and it was, of course, kinda not that great (next week I'll probably make whole wheat dough the night before and keep it in the fridge), but on the whole, these pizzas were way healthier than the frozen kind we usually have.






I'm more impressed than usual with the awesome Claudia who has just completed an entire meatless week (no fish, even)!!

Today's just cleaning/cooking/marketing. Claudia wants a gas mask so I took her to an army/navy surplus store this afternoon. They didn't have anything in her price range. I'm going to be baking and cooking three kinds of dried things--chicpeas for hummus, great northern beans for chili and black beans just because--and I'm kind of weirdly excited about it. I think because I'm eliminating all that crap that's added to processed foods. It looks like we're going to be eating a lot more vegetarian with Claudia, because it just makes sense for us to do so. Little girls pretty much not included, though.

Jordan and Sammy looking at book orders

Dining with mosquitos

Love of the game

This youtube footage of a little girl absolutely tearing it up at flag football makes me happy. She's got some moves!

Making our way through the Unitarian culture

Well, I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. We've been invited to a water healing ceremony with a "traditional African healer and peacemaker".

There's a potluck after party. If we were to go, I guess we should take something besides yams.

The Weekend

OMG, we're exhausted, Jamie and I. But in a good way.

Friday night Jordan and Sammy went to a movie/snack thing at their school.

Saturday Jamie worked most of the day and the girls and I went to work a garage sale to benefit the Pride bands. It was in the Lockerbie neighborhood, which I adore in all its historic and cobblestoney goodness. The garage sale was fun because it was a chance to talk to people I'm in band with and they are super interesting. There was a ferret there and I now think we *need* a ferret.






The girls agree.

Saturday night was the sleepover. It went really well. But the dog, seriously, needs to find a nice farm to live on.

Sunday we did church and then Jamie went home to practice for rehearsal and the girls and I stayed to help clean and paint the interior of the building the 7th and 8th graders use for religious education classes. Sunday night Jamie went to rehearsal and Claudia and I watched the Emmy's.

Healthy Eating du Jour

Today's cast of characters:

cheese pizza
chicken nuggets
grapes
mac and cheese
dill pickles
potato chips
tortilla chips (not pictured)



For dessert--brownies with ice cream, whipped cream, cherries and chocolate sauce.

(The little girls are having a sleepover. There are five 9-year-olds here right now. Wheeee!!!)

It's almost 11 p.m.

And the children are *still* not nestled all snug in their beds.

Sammy and Jordan got to go to a movie at their school tonight and we didn't get them home until around 9:15. Then after this, that and the other thing--including pastry eating and lax parenting, they're still up--Sammy's ankles are itching so she's putting on anti-itch cream and bandaids, Jordan's watching the "last three minutes" of some tween-ish disaster on Disney, Claudia's getting ready to watch live bands play live music on MTV, I'm doing dishes (not really, I'm actually blogging, but I am doing laundry), Bo just peed on the carpet (Claudia mentioned tonight she wants to put a skirt on him, just under his tail to cover up his unsightly butthole region), and Jamie's getting ready to clean the carpet. Again.

Oh, and Woo F-ing Hoo to Jason who turned in his thesis to the powers that be today!

On Mortification

Beverly posts today about the challenges of technology and about two minutes after reading her post, I did something so mortifyingly, stupidly technology-challenged, I was in tears.

And worse, this isn't the first time it's happened.

A couple of years ago I received an email from someone in my Democrat group in Houston that was about a rally they were having that sounded like it involved an annoying level of hippie crap (sorry, Beverly). It made me feel very irritated, so I fired off an email to Jamie complaining about it, possibly including the phrase "damn dirty hippies". The only problem was, I actually hit "reply" instead of "forward" so I had to end up apologizing to the dirty hippies and I Felt Bad.

So today I get an email from the SCHOOL, Claudia's school, about the parent meeting for the stupid abstinence-based sex-ed classes they have, which I feel pressured for various reasons to put my kid in (well, so far, anyway--maybe not this year), even though I'm against those classes for about 10 different reasons, and so I vented. To Jamie. With Profanity. Except that, you see where this is going, I hit reply instead of forward.

OMG!!!!

They've accepted my profuse apology, but I'm still cringing.

On Modesty

Okay, in the category of seriously unimportant news...

Remember the Hooters waitress who got pulled off a SWest flight a few months ago because of customer complaints that she was dressed inappropriately? (She was allowed back on the flight after making an adjustment to her skirt.) She appeared with Matt Lauer on the Today show the other day to talk about how dreadfully humiliating and unfair the whole experience was. It goes without saying, a lawsuit may be in the offing. To demonstrate how totally NOT inappropriate the outfit in question was, she stood up in the very same outfit on national TV.

Then, in the process of sitting back down, she inadvertantly flashed the studio audience, the network viewing audience, the international viewing audience (most of whom already think we're a nation composed entirely of panty flashing Hooters girls), and now via the internet, every man, woman, and child who will ever live.

She did not, at least, flash her mother, who was sitting beside her for moral support. And she did not flash Matt Lauer, who continued the interview as if nothing humorous or ironic had just happened. She did flash the baby Jesus up in heaven.

Are you happy, lady? You flashed the baby Jesus up in heaven.

Maybe a lawsuit is ill-advised?

Link:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/20638479/

Wiccans Night Out!

I got another update to the girl's night out (oh, how I hate that term) that I'm going to next week. It's now been decided that we're kicking off the evening with an Equinox ceremony (and then going out somewhere.)There will be wiccans.

So, what does one wear to an Equinox service?

And also, I don't know from wiccans, but if it turns out to be anything like the liturgical dance ceremony we had, I will need to have a mental Bad Place to go to, already visited and at the ready...

Notes to Self

How much do I love writer/poet Kyran Pittman's blog, Notes to Self?

Good lord, like a lot, lot.

Her post, Cat's Cradle had me in tears, and it certainly wasn't the only one that did. (Why you gotta make me cry, Kyran Pittman?!?)

An excerpt:

Children turn time into a game with string. When I was eight years old, fall through spring took an eon, summer was an era, and childhood was an eternity. Now I realize that it all passed in a blink of my parents' eyes. The structure of our life together as a family —so elaborate, so permanent-seeming — collapsed between their hands when that time was done.

She's funny and eloquent and thought provoking. You should check her out.

What's for dinner!?!

Why, oh, WHY am I posting what we're having for dinner every night in the right sidebar of the blog? Because a) we're trying to get healthy and this keeps me honest/inspired and b) I love hearing what other people are having for dinner. (Yes! You should share!)

We've been meaning to do this for ages (get healthy, I mean), but Melissa's recent blog post at Decapitating Shadows about high fructose corn syrup kicked us in to high gear. And it's going really well!

We've been making from scratch a lot more and instead of eating Tyson chicken nuggets, the girls have been eating, quite willingly, oven baked chicken breasts with a crust of wheat germ and spices. For afterschool snacks, they can choose one thing out of each of three bins we keep stocked in the fridge--one has grain stuff, like granola bars or whole grain cereal, one has protein stuff, like yogurt, cheese or peanutbutter and carrots and one has fruits and vegetables. It's all packaged pretty small, but they get a nice well-rounded snack to tide them until dinner.

So now I'm off to make whole wheat sweetpotato bread and homemade applesauce for snacks tomorrow.

Oh, P.S. Claudia's announced she's a vegetarian now. Ack!!! But apparently she has principles, so what are you gonna do?

Claudia's art project

This is an art class project Claudia turned in this week. The assignment was a three-point perspective of buildings. She's so awesome.

Colts Game

Thursday night we had pizza and brownies and watched the Colts game. I think I mentioned we're Colts fans, now, except when they're playing the Texans or the Cowboys. I did have a small-ish crying jag during this game, after the girls were in bed, because New Orleans=South=HOME and this fling with an exotic midwestern boy has me lying in my now-midwestern bed--in other words, it pinged my homesickness a bit. But that was short lived, the look on Jamie's face was pretty funny, and the game was total fun.

The Weekend

Happy Birthday to Grandma Knight on Sunday! Jamie's Grandma, and now my grandmother, too, is a truly lovely and interesting person who I feel so priviledged to have in my family. She is just really such a neat lady! Many happy returns, Grandma!

It's an Adam from Northern Exposure weekend when it comes to food around here. "I want what *I* cook!", Adam once said. Well, the mexican food restaurants in Indy can kiss my ass because we made awesome, awesome enchiladas last night. Oh, thank GOD, I was about to die. The sauce was delicious and completely simple to make. And salsa. There were also homemade cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing for breakfast Sunday morning and greek potatoes with dinner Sunday night. Jamie's taken to calling me a potato savant, which I would actually agree with, but hey.........wait just a minute!!! No, that's autistic-savant. So, I'm good! (and so are the potatoes).

Sometimes life is just like Saturday Night Live, it seems. There was a Dakota Fanning Show sketch on SNL recently where Amy Poehler, playing Dakota, was talking to the production assistant and calling her Catherine, and finally, after taking a lot of orders from Dakota, Catherine says chirpily, "remember! you can call me mom!". This weekend Claudia's been calling me Susanne. I don't like it!

The little girls were thrilled that The Sound of Music was being shown on Saturday night and equally importantly, they got to stay up and watch the entire thing. I've promised Sammy I'll burn her a cd with all the best TSOM tunes on it.

Claudia's been wondering what it's like to stay up all night so she talked Jamie into staying up with her last night. They had tons of junk food, watched tv and youtube until 6am!

Lookit what I'm making for one of our walls!