I was finally, at last, officially issued mah gubbermint ID badge yesterday. And despite the cheery encouragement from the woman who took my photo, the badge features what can only be described as THE WORST PHOTO OF ME EVER TAKEN. Actually, that's not the only way to describe it. After sending a celebratory selfie to a handful of friends, they responded with the following descriptions of the photo: hahahahahahaha oh noooooooo That does not look like you! Holy weird 70s hostage lighting You just look like a Karen I was gonna say a 1950s Appalachian grandma I see eye sockets but no eyeballs? Where are your teeth? WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE Oooof, girl. None of them are wrong. I, personally, cannot figure out how I manage to look sort of...melted? And also very swollen? While all my facial features kind of...shrunk? I'm like a puffy, well-fed hostage-ghoul of some kind. (Less creatively and more bluntly: I look old, and I look fat. Hooray! What a terrific confidence booster to have hanging around my neck every day.) Anyway, now that I've gone on and on about it, I guess I should just go ahead and post the damn photo, right? It's... Read more →

Behold, the shortest #TIREWATCH in the history of #TIREWATCHING. These appeared outside yesterday, and I was initially dismayed because I' was under the impression that the replacement tires were getting shipped directly to the mechanic, thus eliminating any possibility of them overstaying their welcome in my foyer. But Jason came home and promptly loaded them up, and then drove them over to the shop where they are getting installed today. The End! (That's it. That's the post.) The two blown-to-hell tires are NOT candidates for keeping around as emergency spares, and will NOT be coming home in the back of the minivan, where they would otherwise likely be forgotten about for a month or so before getting rolled into an inconvenient corner of the garage and/or the hallway right outside my bedroom, like a new and updated version of the Pennywise cutout prank. Truly, a bit of a missed opportunity for us. In summary and summation, I am looking forward to getting my car back, but DAMN, being normal responsible adults really kills the #content around here. Read more →

Something Jason and I struggle with is making sure each of our individual children get enough quality one-on-one time with us. We finally seem to have hit a solution by just picking random dates on the calendar and marking them off as "Mom and Ike Night" or "Dad and Ezra Night." We have no specific plans for what we're actually going to do on those nights, but dammit, we're going to do something. For the last couple months, Mom and Ike night has mostly been about ribs. Ike loves ribs. He is otherwise our pickiest eater by far, but ribs, man. He will eat the shit out of some ribs. Chocolate milk is another must for Mom and Ike Night. (Please note the happy face drawn on the chocolate milk. He did that because that's how chocolate milk makes him feel. Thank you, chocolate milk!) These nights are a screen-free zone, so we usually bring along some word searches and books and art supplies. (And plushies. So, so many Very Important Plushies.) This past Wednesday was our latest Mom and Ike Night, and our plan was ribs, chocolate milk and a trip to Michael's for more art supplies. We ordered... Read more →

Let's take a short break in all the mental health content and get back to what I'm best at: Overly long and involved stories about pee. (Will Vyvanse effect the number of parenthetical tangents in this post? No idea! Let's find out together.) So first, an update: Tormund the foster cat is still here. During his time as the January Pet of the Month he did get a couple of inquires and even one application, but alas. No adoption. He's spending more and more time upstairs, thus retiring his "Basement Cat" nickname in favor of "Torrie." He still prefers to spend the night in the basement guest room, but will now cautiously accept the occasional company. Since the basement guest room and bathroom are also occasionally needed for human guests, we moved his litter box upstairs, next to Finn and Rey's boxes. (Inside what COULD be a wonderfully useful walk-in coat closet, but thanks to the wall-to-wall litter boxes, it is the Unholiest of Unholy Places, and we do not speak of it.) (It is also where we store all our IKEA shopping bags, and where we conveniently forget about them whenever we go to IKEA.) He seemed fine with... Read more →

Some of you may remember that power outages were a frequent occurrence and regular problem in our old house and neighborhood. We lost power almost every time it snowed, or rained really hard, or there was some wind, or somebody sneezed a little too loudly while standing a little too close to the power lines, etc. Sometimes it would be out for a few hours, most of the time it took at least a full day, and occasionally it went out for multiple days at a time. Make that multiple occasions, actually. You may remember all that, but it was made clear to me this morning that my children absolutely do not. Around 6:24 a.m., a couple of our smoke detectors started beeping. (OH GOD DO YOU ALSO REMEMBER THE BEEPING?) We realized the power had gone out, like huh. That's honestly never happened, and is still one of my Top Five Favorite Things about this house and our neighborhood: Underground power lines that don't get knocked out by falling tree branches every other goddamn day. Glory be. We peeked out a few windows to confirm that it wasn't just us -- the entire neighborhood was completely dark. We heard... Read more →

(Things That Do Not Work is a sporadically running feature on things in my house/life/general existence that Do Not Work. Sporadically means "I haven't written one of these since March of 2019." Try using it in a sentence today! Anyway, here is Part One and Part Two.) This towel rack. It Does Not Work. This particular towel rack was left behind in the kids' bathroom by the previous owners, probably because they learned, as we have, that it Does Not Work. No one uses this towel rack. Except for me, when I hopefully and foolishly hang fresh, clean towels on it every laundry day LIKE A SUCKER. THE FLOOR IS OUR TOWEL RACK NOW, MOTHER. There is a photo somewhere, in the deepest recesses of my camera roll (aka last month), of two towels I discovered on the floor of their bathroom. One is absolutely covered in black mildew spots. The other has been peed on -- likely quite recently! -- by a dog. I will not post it here, because it is entirely too disgusting. (Apologies to all of my friends and family members who received said photo in an ALL CAPS text message from me. You are the... Read more →

Anybody got any recommendations for nice-looking fake trees that I could maybe get on sale right now? Because look at this shit. Although, honestly, I just swept up the carnage and burned it all up in our fireplace. Jason came inside from dragging the tree-corpse to the curb and said our neighborhood smelled amazing! *** Hey, remember when I had a baby? Don't ever do that, because look at THIS shit. A smallish-large niche corner of the Internet lost its mind over that, while he was just like, "GREAT, another THING I have to DO now. It never ENDS, these days." *** (I just now watched the yard trim collection guy pick up, toss, and mulch our giant-ass tree. It took him barely a minute, but I bet he hates us now.) (Yes, it snowed! Don't worry, they didn't cancel school for that piddly lil' covering. They simply closed three hours early yesterday and had a two hour delay this morning for maximum schedule fuckery. YOU CAN STILL SEE GRASS, PEOPLE.) *** Look at this shit, for no particular reason (other than BFF doggo adorableness, of course): We originally decided that we wouldn't take in another foster dog until the... Read more →

Sometime before Thanksgiving, Jason wondered if we should consider getting an artificial Christmas tree this year. I looked at him like he'd sprouted a second head, and that second head was suggesting that we go vegan, give the dogs away, and consider getting an artificial Christmas tree this year. We were both raised in Artificial Tree Households -- my mom told me I was allergic to real trees; his mom couldn't stand the needles and mess -- and our mutual dislike of the fake trees was something we discussed during our engagement. I would take some Claritin and we would be a Real Tree Household. Our first real grown-up rejection of our upbringing. Then my in-laws generously gifted us with their giant (and super expensive) fake tree and most of their ornaments. And because I didn't want to offend them with my Controversial Tree Views (on top of not going to church! and registering as a Democrat!), we dutifully used it for our first couple Christmases, hauling it from one rental apartment to another. I have no memory of where we even stored the thing in a few of those places, but after we bought our condo in DC I... Read more →

Once again, we threw a huge party and did not take a single photo of the actual party. Perhaps this is all a strange, yearly hoax where we only pretend to throw a huge party and like, know people and have friends. Or perhaps Friendsgiving only happens in our sick, twisted minds and we really spend the day drinking and conversing with ghosts! Here are the things I DID take photos of, in no particular order: Ezra created a scavenger hunt for the kids, complete with a big box of prizes. I had to ask about the "Stupid Hello Kitty" -- was there a smart Hello Kitty out there as well, like as a trick? -- and he explained that it was a Happy Meal "girl" toy that Ike got by mistake. "It's not stupid because it's a girl toy, though," Ezra clarified. "It's stupid because she's supposed to be a superhero but when you press on her head and it just kind of raises the arms a tiny bit and it's just..." He trailed off, visibly disgusted at the lack of product design that went into this particular Happy Meal offering. (The "Launch Pokeball" was the Happy Meal "boy"... Read more →

HI THERE! WHO'S READY TO CRUSH SOME SHIT TODAY? lol jk that mug is full of Theraflu, not coffee. I don't have the flu (we "believe" in the flu shot around here, because it is the flu shot, not Santa Claus), but some absolutely brutal cold -- or some amalgram of multiple colds from Jason's work, the kids' schools, that field trip to the Maryland Germ Factory Science Center I chaperoned last week -- that will not let me live or breathe or go 10 minutes without coughing up a lung. I didn't want to or even intend to chaperone the field trip, because I am really terrible at interacting with other people's children and never know how to handle my pack of charges. ("So you like, go to school? That sucks.") I shoot for being the Cool Chill Mom but instead end up being the Awkward and Ill-Prepared Mom who has terrible Time Management Skills. I forgot to ask about bathroom breaks until we were suddenly in a panicked sprint to find the nearest restroom two floors away; I couldn't find an empty table at lunchtime so we all ended up eating on the floor in a random corner;... Read more →