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 →

ANSWER: Just one, but it'll cost ya a Lego table. Oh the brickmanity! Amazingly enough, I had absolutely nothing to do with this. Jason decided to install one of those fancy app-controlled, color-changing light bulb systems and thoroughly misjudged the strength of the crappy MDF and cardboard table while swapping out bulbs in the ceiling. The crash was tremendous. (He's fine. So are the light bulbs.) Note, however, that all the Lego plates survived intact, furthering my belief that even after a global fiery apocalypse, there will still be Legos to step on. Also, as my children work to salvage and remove as many plates as possible, this is officially the most attention this table has gotten since I made them the damn thing. And so we say goodbye to the last remaining vestige of the Isle of Sodor. I shall of course be replacing it with something from IKEA, because life is a flat circle and also Jason spent all our money on designer light bulbs. Read more →

The time has come to bid a fond, final farewell to the beloved, fantastical, fucked-up Isle of Sodor. Our neighbors threw a party this past weekend and I met a mom who lives down the street. A mom with a little boy; a little boy who was running around with trains in both hands and determined to make every other non-train item he encountered (toy cars, carrot sticks, a dog) into choo-choos. She was very pregnant. I sensed weakness. "Sooooooooooo have you guys bought any Thomas trains for him yet?" BAM. DONE. All our trains are belong to you, now. SHUT UP AND TAKE MY TRAINS. Despite being SO SURE that investing in a bajillion miles of train track was a worthwhile plan because "every kid we have will play with them!", it didn't really work out. Ezra was only mildly interested in them, while Ike could not care less about them. He only wants to play with and watch what his big brothers are currently into, and skipped right over Thomas completely. And so our collection has been sitting in a heap while other toys and clutter piles up around them on the train table, taking up a large... Read more →

But first, a WHAT DA FUQ IS THIS FAQ: Q. WHAT DA FUQ IS THIS? A. Once upon a time, back in 2007, I purchased a train table and some Thomas the Tank Engine sets for Noah. And then proceeded to go on a three-day bender of obsessive track building. You know, for "my kid." For his "benefit." In order to prove that I was not losing my mind at all, not even a little bit, I posed a bunch of trains and cars around the track and wrote a little photo-essay about them. The trains all cursed a lot and Sir Topham Hat was an alcoholic. Q. YOU'RE WEIRD. A. Oh, you don't even KNOW, Janet. You don't even KNOW. From there, things got even weirder. Our train table started to become a catch-all surface for toy clutter, and Noah tended to bring other non-Thomas toys into his train play, like dinosaurs. I found this innocent bit of plaything dissonance to be HILARRRR and made up another story about it all. Q. OKAY. AND? A. One time I built a monorail. Q. WOW. AND? A. And another time school got canceled for snow and things got even more baller.... Read more →