Would you like to use the bathroom? Check out the guest room, perhaps? OR WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIEEEEE???? "The basement's not a mess, is it guys?" "NO MOM IT'S FINE ALL CLEAN ALL GOOD. " (Please tell me someone else has a child with this particularly distinctive play style, better known as the "pull everything out until I have barricaded myself into a six-square-inch square of free floor space within a deep murky swamp of every toy I own.") And yes, those are the same Thomas tracks and trains from oh, so long ago. And yes, I've made oh, so many attempts at giving them away over the years. And yet they remain, much like the zombie toddler-sized socks that I keep finding and throwing out, finding and throwing out, over and over again, while also being haunted by much larger poltergeist child who keeps leaving his dirty socks on the dining room table. Because none of my living children will own up to being the dining room dirty sock leaver, oh nooooo Mom, it definitely wasn't meeeeee, those aren't myyyyyy socks, and there is no spoooooooooon. Anyway, looks like Infrastructure Week is going great! But. Wait. Is that...no.... Read more →

Apologies in advance for this random assortment of stories with no real point or connection; I am simply too beyond obsessed with the Entitled Rich People With Kids Who Don't SAT Good College Cheating Scandal story that I cannot go a 10 full minutes without refreshing my news feed. It's like the universe knew I was fresh out of Fyre Festival and Theranos documentaries/podcasts/memes and gave me a little gift of righteous schadenfreude, with an extra topping of fraud and Influencers and A GODDAMN DESPERATE HOUSEWIFE. *** For the first time (....in forever) (gaaaahhhhh nooo what have I done) (I'm sorry, I could delete that and spare you but I refuse to suffer alone), I was NOT awoken by Noah's godforsaken foghorn of an alarm clock. Instead, I woke up to the blindingly bright flashlight on Jason's phone shining directly in my eyes at 6 a.m. while he frantically whispered: Blood. There's so much blood. He was running around pointing the light at the floor, at tiny drops of red near his side of the bed, out into the hallway and then to an alarmingly large puddle on the stairs. "I don't know whose blood this is!" he said. "But... Read more →

(Here is Part One. We figured out how to turn off the second mystery alarm AND change the time for Daylight Savings, but it is still waking up everyone else in the house except for the person it is intended to wake up.) Laundry hampers. We have a lot of them! And yet. They Do Not Work. This is the hamper I share with my husband in our master bathroom. I bought it at Target a million years ago and it definitely used To Work. It's made up of three separate laundry bags so you can sort everything into separate loads of whites/darks/delicates/whathaveyou. Each bag has handles so you can carry them individually to the washer when full. It is right next to our shower and perhaps 10 steps from our closet, where most of our dressing and undressing happen. THEREFORE, it should work. But every since we moved to this house, my husband developed a weird quirk where he consistently tossed his clothes in a random floor pile JUST OUTSIDE the bathroom door. Sometimes I would watch him come OUTSIDE the bathroom to do this, despite the hamper being THERE! IT'S RIGHT THERE! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING? After... Read more →

Hello and welcome to the first installment of a series I just made up about things that Do Not Work in my home/life/general existence. You know what Does Not Work? This alarm clock Does Not Work. This is the Sonic Bomb Extra-Loud Dual Alarm Clock with Red Flashing Alert Lights and a Powerful Bed Shaker, which we bought for a certain 13 year old who needs to get his ass out of bed in the morning but who lo, does not get his ass out of bed in the morning. We tried several different alarms before this one -- an alarm directly next to his head paired with another one placed on the floor on the other side of his room. A different and slightly louder alarm tucked away on the top shelf of his closet. Even our own screeching voices yelling at him through the Echo Dot he keeps tucked under his pillow. He slept through all of them, or worse, would make the journey down from his bunk bed while still asleep, turn the alarm(s) off, and then climb right back in bed with absolutely zero memory of doing so when I showed up at his door 20... Read more →

Jason's been on a business trip all week so I've been trying my best to hold things together on my own. Nobody tell him I've been soaking the dinner pots since Monday. Poppy jumped over the fence to chase a squirrel, Beau escaped out an open garage door, and Jake found and consumed an entire package of English muffins. Packaging included, save for a single twist tie. Oh, and Rey got her head stuck in a package of seaweed snack while Finn followed after her trying to clean her butt. . It's like, when getting all these dogs, I looked back on the semi-impossible toddler days of yore and was like, yes. Let's absolutely do that all over again. On the other hand, the human children are no longer toddlers or semi-impossible. Noah was so excited to see sandwiches for dinner he didn't even care that they were technically full of vegetables. Then last night Ike ate two full servings of chicken and was the first one to finish, so he ordered me to text J and report on this truly STUNNING development. He gave me a huge hug this morning and said, "Remember how great I was at dinner... Read more →

Last March, a wind storm snapped a large branch off one the willow trees in our backyard. (Well, actually many, many branches, as seen here.) But one particular branch got...stuck...on its way down. Like so: Being the responsible and capable homeowners that you know we sometimes seriously think about attempting to be, we saw two possible solutions: 1) Hire a tree company to come deal with it. 2) #BRANCHWATCH So the branch has been stuck there for since last March. When we're outside on the deck we might stare at it, discuss the physics and trajectory that got it wedged where it is, and what it might take for it to finally fall down. It'd make good firewood, we'll say for the hundredth time, if we could just get it down from there. Sometimes we just complain about it, as it's especially noticeable and ugly and dead in the spring and summer because the willows are too spindly and sparse to camouflage it. The kids throw rocks and soccer balls at it from time to time. We all poke our heads outside after every subsequent snow or rain or wind storm to see if it's finally been rattled loose. But... Read more →

Several New Things I Learned About Dogs This Month: 1) If you don't neuter a male dog, some very bad and unpleasant things can happen to him later in life! And to your house! 2) You know those monthly heartworm pills your vet is always up in your grill about? They are very super important! 3) Dogs can get their very own special form of the Zombie Pinkeye. Poor Foster Dog, man. After getting the break of a lifetime last month, he has not really caught another one since. So, to recap: Jake is about 10 years old and was never neutered. He still isn't, because he is currently heartworm positive and cannot go under anesthesia until he tests negative. He also cannot be listed as available for adoption until he's both negative AND neutered. We knew all of these things when we accepted the foster placement, and we specifically requested a senior dog with treatable medical needs who otherwise didn't have a shot in hell at adoption from a shelter. So this isn't a post complaining about us having to deal with any of this shit -- but I just need to point out that FAT HOT HAM THIS... Read more →

Yesterday was a snow day, and now today is a sick day. Technically yesterday was a sick day too, and the day before that, but that didn't stop him from sneaking on his boots and snowpants and running outside to play when I wasn't paying attention.* He came back in not long after for some Motrin, hot chocolate, and regret. *Me? Actually pay attention to a sick feverish child? What kind of helicopter-y bullshit is that? To be fair, my children are all now top-level experts and getting away with stuff. Today I discovered an elaborate room-to-room communication system made of Snap Circuits that allows them to pass messages back and forth using MORSE CODE. I don't know what they're planning but frankly, this just looks like none of my business. Carry on, you weird little humans. Carry on until you rule the world. Read more →

In an attempt to understand the Kids Today, what with their YooToobs and SnapToks and all that jazz, I did a podcast! Do you "do" a podcast, though? I didn't record a podcast, because I just talked and other people recorded it, and it wasn't my podcast, it was my dear dear friend Amy S. Bridges' podcast, We Are Still Hungry. Amy is better known here on ye olde blob as the person responsible for That Time I Shared Fried Calamari With The Late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, back when my life was probably a lot more interesting and blob-worthy. Oh, and it was also Amy's friend Paula's podcast, who is now my friend because I spilled wine all over her kitchen table in an Essential Tremor-y fit and she didn't care at all, or at least was gracious enough to pretend she didn't. She also owns enviable kitchen towels and an adorable wee doggo. Anyway, we got very real about mental illness and suicidal ideations, and what it's like to live your life after attempting to end it. Also: feminism and boy children, because you know I can't go a full hour without being a radical liberal commie... Read more →

Happy 2019! Do we have a new president yet? Well, all that garbage aside, lots of things have actually happened! I got a foster dog! I turned 41! I cut my hair off! I took my kids on a boat! I went to a New Year's Eve party and talked to people! Then I lost my phone and found it the next day out on my street! I slammed my ankle (yes, that ankle, it's always the same damn ankle) in a car door! The biggest development (besides my swollen-ass ankle) is definitely Jake the Foster Dog, better known (by me and only me) as Goobs. He was found as a stray in Georgia and then spent an excruciating SEVENTEEN MONTHS being overlooked in a shelter. This was him a week and a half ago, getting loaded up for transport. And this is him now! He's a sweetheart. He gets along very, very well with kids, dogs, cats and couches. We think he's about 10, but he's really perked up as he's settled in and can get downright playful and butt-wiggly. Vet said he's in excellent health. He's starting treatment for heartworms (which were caught early) in a couple weeks... Read more →