i only hope the other children don't throw rocks at her during recess

it's thing two's turn to take snacks in to preschool today. other kids have recently brought in cheese puffs, fruit leathers, even skittles.

my kid? my kid wants to bring in cucumbers and carrots.

definitive proof that the internet has jumped the shark

i have been invited by my banana to "party with potassium" at eatachiquita.com.

my poor little heathen children

thing one crawled into bed with us at 6:30 this morning and triumphantly announced that she had figured out why christmas is called christmas:

"it's because the ice on the ground is crystals, and we miss seeing santa because we're asleep!"

works for me.

dear merriam-webster

for your consideration, the latest words coined by my offspring:

hicksterical (hik-ster-i-kəl) adjective – extremely amusing to country folks

"that hay ride was really hicksterical!"

imprising (im-priz-iŋ) adjective – simultaneously impressive and surprising

"look, i can jump over all my halloween candy! isn't that imprising?"

there's a new sheriff in town part deux

and indeed, the folks i called the cops on as suspected drug dealers are, in fact, my new neighbors. they move in the day before thanksgiving.

time to dust off the ol' muffin tins for a more neighborly welcome.

there's a new sheriff in town, and her name is crazy

we live in a pretty tranquil part of minneapolis, but my overprotective-mother/irish-worrying-heritage/dead-in-a-ditch mentality still gets the better of me.

viz: i recently read in our neighborhood newsletter about mobile drug dealing and how to respond if you think you see it. info duly highlighted (yes) and posted on fridge.

then this morning, as thing two and i went about our morning routine, i noticed a car stop in front of my house, drive off, and return a few minutes later to park. a gal hopped out, then hopped back in. hmmm.

about five minutes later, another car pulls up and parks. crime fighter jenny leaps into action. with my bed head and binoculars, i stand at my window accumulating all the relevant data (makes, models, plate numbers), then call 911.

within seven minutes, there were two squad cars on my street, and an officer shepherd was on the phone with me: "we see the vehicles, ma'am." (there were three cars now.)

unfortunately, also within those seven minutes i realized that the cars belonged to people who were LOOKING AT THE HOUSE FOR SALE NEXT DOOR and their realtor. heh heh.

i babbled something to officer shepherd along the lines of: "oh my god i am so embarrassed it never occurred to me someone might be looking at the house before eight in the morning my neighbors are in their 80's and frail they never leave the house this early i have little kids and i just want the neighborhood to be safe i am so sorry!"

officer shepherd assured me i had done the right thing and that it never hurts to call. unless maybe you're calling the cops on the future nice young couple next door. (they were there for 2-1/2 hours and i saw a ladder, which makes me think they have made an offer and were doing the inspection. good thing i didn't send for the swat team.)

well, i'm off to fight more crime. jenny vee: keeping the neighborhood safe from...potential neighbors.

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?