why, yes, i am insane - thank you for asking

apparently, we are getting a bird. who will be named "miracle max". to go with the two kids. and the two cats. and the goldfish. hooray?

i KNEW this was going to happen.

my mom has birds. two zebra finches. and the phone call i've been waiting for came today.

"mom! we are being serious! papa is giving us an allowance and we found a bird that is only $17 dollars and we can pay for it and pay for all the food and if mimi gets a bigger bird cage we can have her bird cage and we will take care of it and make sure it's not loud in the morning and that the cats don't eat it please please please mom we will pay for all of it and the bird is just like mimi's zebra finches and they aren't smelly and we will take care of it and they are loud in the morning but we will make sure it's quiet and shut the door and ..."

i was laying on the couch, with the speaker phone on so curtis could hear their entreaties, and both of us were laughing quite hard. :) the kicker is, i may end up saying yes. *sigh* i love living things... and i think a bird might be a cheery addition to the house. but don't tell The Girls i said that. i told them "daddy and i will have to talk about it"....

and the weak will be made strong

i am a little stressed. yes, yes, i know i'm kid free and seem to have no right to be stressed, but trust me. there are reasons. and it's not just me. there's a little circle of my peeps who are all waiting for the same thing as i am, and all of us are coming slightly unglued. i guess there are legitimate reasons, but mostly i think it's just the waiting, 'cause what we're waiting for is gonna be so good. but waiting is so hard...it gives you time to think about all the "what if's" and get yourself good and worked up over them. (oh, c'mon... i know i'm not the only one who can talk herself into a wee bit of panic!)

so this morning i am reminding myself of this -"those that wait upon God will renew their strength; they will rise up on wings like eagles." i may be prone to my courage failing, but God is not. and he loves me, and he will give me his shoulder to lean on... if i remember to ask!

the most fun you can have by accident

Curtis and I had a Saturday miracle – we’ve both been around all day, but it hadn’t been a “together” day, you know? So at dinner we were trying to think of something to do together that didn’t involve paying for anything - ha! - and Curtis suggested taking the book he’s reading out loud to me (how sweet!) to a park in the next neighborhood that we’ve never been to, and so we took chairs and off we went. And we got there, there was a free “old school r&b” concert just beginning! So we set up our chairs and clapped along and sang “1,2,3,4 – c’mon baby say you love me / 5,6,7 tii-iimes”! it was totally fantastic, and much to our amusement, we were definitely in the minority - two pasty canadians sticking out like sore thumbs. :) it was the most propitious thing – we had a great evening! Curtis made the comment several times that there was more genuine community in that park than we had seen a long time...

The sweetest gifts of life are the ones you never see coming.

definitely worth your time

my friend jennifer sent this to me... my favorite artist with my favorite movie. i admit it - my eyes welled a little bit. (tho i do tend to be hormotional.) you should watch it. trust me. best love song lyrics ever.

'fly' - by sara groves, accompanied by 'the princess bride'

why "grown ups" still need mom & dad

so... in a fit of loneliness last week, my dad called to say he wanted the girls to come stay with them for a while. his close friend had just passed, and he didn't get to see them when my mom was out here in june, and so he made a decree. he was taking 10 days off, and the girls would come have festive good times. i'm all for that! then my mom, who makes slightly less reasonable plans, got involved and said they would keep them for 3 1/2 weeks! hooray! as long as the four of them are happy, i'm happy!

but the silence is a little eerie this morning... there's lots of it. this will be my longest kid-free stretch in 10 1/2 years... i don't know if i remember how to live for just myself. although, the more i think about it, the more i think that it'll come back pretty quickly! :)

already making plans, cause i won't need a sitter....
making just one thing for lunch - one thing I want...
naps when i feel like it...
going to movies with curtis....
less laundry....
no fighting to referee...

hmm.... this could be sweet! :) thanks mom & dad!

whining isn't very attractive, is it?

my "wounded" husband is off to play pool with his billiards buddies tonight, while i am stuck at home with the girls. don't get me wrong, i love my girls. but so help me.... if fun doesn't break out around here soon, by which i mean fun for me, somebody's going to get hurt. there has been a definite tipping of the fun scales in his favor, and i, for one, am tired of it. of course, i'm tired a lot these days, so i'm not really up for a lot of fun, but still...there has got to be an equilibrium in the universe or surely it will explode!

murphy's law

i recently learned that driving from NC to MD is the worst drive in america. i don't have empirical evidence of that, but the anecdotal evidence i personally collected in the last 2 days is irrefutable.

i drove to college park, md, to pick up kyra from her week in washington at the national young leaders conference (where she learned many things and had a great time, except in her hotel room alone at night...poor thing), planning to drive out thursday, spend the night with meg in a hotel, and drive home with both girls friday. our arrival thursday was 2 full hours later than intended due to traffic. mind numbing traffic. rage inducing traffic, sometimes for construction, sometimes for no reason at all. at one point, i literally travelled 2 miles in 40 minutes. by the time we got to our hotel, i was dreading driving home.

rightly so, apparently. same thing on the way back. except with two wild girls in the back who had missed each other and were demonstrating it in the way girls do... loud giggling and backseat wildness. which i tried to embrace, because i'm glad my girls love each other. but by the time we got home, finally, i was ready for a little tlc from my husband - i needed a break! and i arrived home, miserable, to this text message:

"almost home. have to stop at urgent care. sprained my ankle."

damn. now who am i going to send to bring me snacks while i lay on the couch?

deja vu

some of you may have been reading this to remember the frog fiasco of 2006... when we had a frog lay eggs in our pool and decided to let them grow - having never seen tadpoles grow into frogs before. the long and short of it was, it took 2 months, and then i would find little frogs drowned in the pool! talk about traumatic! so with the help of our artist friend, andi, we scooped up hundreds and hundreds of froglets, put them in a rubbermaid container and drove them out to a pond where hopefully they would do better in a more natural environment.

aaaannnyhoooo - we woke up to frog eggs again 2 mornings ago! hooray! this time, we scooped them before they could hatch, and put them in an ice cream bucket, which just now we walked over to the little creek to set free. not as fun as watching them grow, but way more fun than watching them die!

raising awareness

there is an issue that we don't talk about; a group that goes unnoticed by far too many of us. i am talking, of course, about the suicidal snails.

my daughter brought one such snail home from school. a water snail, it seemed to cohabit happily with The Colonel (our goldfish). recently tho, i'd been finding him circling the top of the bowl, half in and half out of the water...and i would gently nudge him back into the bowl, thinking nothing of it. until yesterday.

yesterday, i came home to find him at the bottom of the bowl - on the outside. he had crawled out and down, clearly trying to end his tiny water snail life. i hurriedly plucked him and dropped him back into the water, hoping i wasn't too late... today he is on the move again, but i'm going to have to keep an eye on him. who knew snails were so emotionally complex?

follow up...

oh. my. gosh.

everyone left for the day (my inlaws are here) and i was on my own for lunch. and the perogies spoke to me from the freezer.... "eat us.... eat us..." it's been over 4 years since the oniony, buttery, fried goodness of a perogy filled my senses.... the smell of them frying in the pan, the hot(!!) cheese & potato filling burning my tongue, the crisp outside and smooth inside... i savored every bite. and could have eaten dozens of them... but i restrained myself to 7. i told my brother, vincent, i'd share a couple with him, and it's important to me to keep my word, but i am strongly considering hanging him out to dry. either that, or i need to find a perogy smuggler...

summer posting

i'm going to be slightly less consistent over the summer months -shocker - as life slips into vacay mode....for instance, we have family in town this week. but they brought me the most wonderful gift ever....

PEROGIES!

it's impossible to get good, genuine perogies here... and now i have 4 bags in my freezer. i feel compelled to note that his mom brought them as her carry on, frozen in a thermal bag, in the airplane. curtis' family is good people.