i've never been so glad that cheetos exist

as the apotheosis of michael pollan and the whole foods movement continues, i just read an article that published recipes from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "lessons from an older american diet," it said.

lessons like...

calf head soup

dress the head and boil until done, remove the bones from the meat, take all the meat from the upper part of the head and chop fine, and put it into the soup, with chopped potatoes and carrots, chives, pepper, salt, parsley, sweet margery, and a little butter. stir a little flour and milk together to thicken the soup. make a hash of the meat from the under jaw. take the brains from the head, beat up eggs as for an omelet, turn this over the brains after seasoning with salt and pepper. melt some butter and turn on. set it in the oven to cook slowly. skin and slice the tongue; put into a saucepan, with butter, pepper, and salt. stew dry.

oh dear sweet fancy moses. i want to go mainline some polysyllabic chemicals right now.

could i be any more of a hausfrau?

here's a rundown of my morning plans:

• weight watchers
• target
• the liquor store

who says cocktails aren't for children?

looking for a great drink, and an even better reason to drink it? if you're in the twin cities, come to uptown's bar abilene on wednesday, november 18. from 6-9 p.m., it will be "margaritas for a cause" night, with $3 from every margarita sold going to benefit children with cmv.

what's cmv, you ask? so did i.

cmv, or cytomegalovirus, is one of those beasties that lives inside most of us by the time we're adults. it doesn't really do much, unless you're a woman who is exposed for the first time during pregnancy; then it can cause severe permanent disabilities in your unborn baby. by "severe" i mean brain malformations, seizures, feeding problems, deafness and blindness. congenital cmv is one of the leading causes of cerebral palsy, and second only to down syndrome in causing mental retardation.

how, then, does cmv fly so under the radar? i was the most paranoid freakazoid alive during my pregnancies, and cmv is the most common virus transmitted to unborn kids, yet in all my relentless reading, i never learned about it. most moms i've asked were similarly unaware, including my friend jodi, who first heard about it when she and her daughter avery were diagnosed with it.

so let's raise a big ol' margarita glass (or two) to raise money for fighting this thing.

got a hot date with a stripper

i hate wallpaper. hate, hate, hate it.

things i never thought i'd need to say, installment no. 471

• don't lick the railing at the post office
• don't put exposed scissor blades in your mouth
• flush (day after day after month after year)

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

except it's october 10.

fuck me.

what fresh hell is this?

chutes and ladders with a cheating almost 6-year-old and a flighty 4-year-old.

flighty won, much to cheater's vexation.

oh, those nutty madcap lutherans

dropping thing two off at preschool, i noticed a flyer for an upcoming church stewardship event. in addition to the usual what, where, when info, it included this enticing come-on:

youth projects!

dvd!

meatballs!

oh, and everything garrison keillor says about lutherans and norwegians is true.

information is beautiful

my new favorite web site, information is beautiful, puts difficult issues into clear visual images, like this:

the billion dollar gram

holy cats.

the lord works in mysterious ways. or maybe not so mysterious.

thing two attends preschool in a church near our house. as i was walking her in today, i saw an elegant older woman in a snazzy silver suv coming through the parking lot. the lot has big yellow posts at the end of each row of parking spaces, and as this woman rounded one of the poles, she scraped the entire side of her suv along it. we're talking a yellow striped dent two feet high and five feet long.

i felt so bad for her. then, when i came back to my car, i noticed a bumper sticker on the suv. it said:

REPUBLICANS: because not everyone can be on welfare

and then i didn't feel bad at all.

this is why i love libraries

and librarians:

uncle bobby's wedding

sibling revelry

my brother just sent my daughters matching skirts for their birthdays.

musical skirts.

musical skirts that play the macarena OVER AND OVER AND OVER.

i should have beat him up less when we were kids. or maybe more.

let's do the time warp again

and who stole my other baby and replaced her with a preschooler?

time warp

ok, who stole my baby and left this huge kindergartener in her place?

just call me ma ingalls

here's what the girlies and i have been up to lately:

• making our own paper
• visiting an apple orchard and then making pies and applesauce
• cross stitching
• making button rings

but i absolutely draw the line at blowing up any pig bladders.

remind me again why smacking them went out of style?

[scene: the kitchen, lunchtime]

enter mom, to make sandwiches

[moments later]

enter things one and two, to fight under mom's feet

mom: "ladies, get out of the kitchen while i'm making lunch!"

the things exit; then, seconds later, thing two reappears

thing two: "mommy, will you help me draw a picture of you, and then help me write, 'you're ugly – i don't like you' on it?"

[end scene]

ewwww

behold kfc's new "sandwich," the double down:

bacon, cheese, more bacon, another kind of cheese, and (but of course) secret sauce between two pieces of BREADED, FRIED CHICKEN!

jesus christ. too bad it comes with potato wedges and a coke instead of a defibrillator.

famous last words

dad, to wife and kids, on entering target:

"remember, we're just here to look at shelving."

right. sure. uh huh.

this is why children aren't good spies

during a game of crazy 8's...

thing two: i got an 8!

me: honey, you're not supposed to tell people what you've got.

thing two: i'm not; i'm telling myself, loudly.

thing one: i've got a secret card, but i'm not telling what it is!

lazy, hazy and certainly crazy

summer may be ending, but the warm memories will stay with me. things like:

the pool bag

remember going to the pool or beach when you were single and/or childless? throw on suit, apply some sunscreen, grab a towel and a drink, and in 5 minutes you were out the door.

today, going to the pool or beach requires only slightly less planning than the invasion of normandy. my bag contains:

• 3 towels
• 3 cover-ups
• 3 sets of waterproof mesh beach shoes
• 3 different types of sunscreen (kryptonite-strength cream for first application, spray for later reaps, and gooey face stick to keep it out of delicate eyes)
• goggles
• pool membership cards
• approximately 1,746 water toys
• giant inflatable floatie rings
• sand buckets and shovels
• beach blanket
• life jackets so the girls can bob "by myself!"
• cell phone (in case of emergencies, and the need to bitch to someone)
• epipens (ditto, except for the bitching)
• band aids for the inevitable falls and scrapes
• snacks, oh so many snacks
• water bottles, with ice cubes, puhlease
• picnic lunch complete with napkins, hand wipes and utensils
• and, if i remember, perhaps a crossword or a trashy magazine at which to sneak the briefest of looks

the awkward beach guy

during one of our recent invasion-of-normandy forays to the beach, we sat near the life guards' chair, where a gaggle of guards gathered throughout the afternoon (too many for duty; i think they were just hanging out together).

non-guard friends also began showing up, including one young man who seated himself next to a bronzed beach beauty and began this exchange:

"hey, brianna."

"hey [seemingly struggling to remember name]...there. how are you?"

"oh, just trying to get a sick tan before i go back to school." (note: he was so white he practically fluoresced.)

"oh."

"yeah, i go to nyu. yeah, i'm going to be graduating this year."

"mmm."

the construsement park

by jove, i think i've got it:

amusement park rides + construction equipment = the hottest new summer entertainment

just think of it: kids (and husbands and grandfathers) would clamor to ride up and down in the bucket of a backhoe, or slide down the rising bed of a dump truck, or spin around in a concrete mixer.

and yes, i had to ask the handsome man the actual names of some of that equipment ("that diggy thing [scooping hand motion]" is not a technical term). you'd think all my years of forced reeducation would have produced some result by now, but no.

addendum, tuesday, august 18: bulldozer bumper cars!