7 Quick Takes

1. Eats, Shoots and Leaves

I'm reading this wonderfully witty book by Lynne Truss right now.  Why?  I know I get sloppy with my punctuation.  I know I suffer from excessive commaitis and the desire to use dashes like salt on popcorn.  The AP manual is excellent if you have a specific question but if you don't see your own mistakes, it's hard to use as a reference.  At least this way, I'm laughing while I'm going through a quick refresher on all that stuff I considered utterly boring back in grade school.   Even the slogan is wonderful, "Sticklers unite, you have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion, and arguably you didn't have a lot of that to begin with."  I could nit pick and point out she ended a sentence with a preposition. That's a no-no.  However, it's still a very fun read. 

2. 20 Year Tape

This year is our 20 year anniversary. The video of our wedding needs to be transferred to a more permanent medium. I think I know what I'm giving us for our anniversary. Every year we sit and watch the tape; though sometimes separately because we've had to tag team for the kids --two universaries when we were watching kiddos at the hospital, such that while we both saw the tape, it was at opposite ends of the day and alone. I remember our first walk, our first kiss, our first words, our first impressions of each other, and look forward to celebrating many many more decades.

3. Is it just me?

This year I've seen more butterflies than ever before.  I wonder if I just was not seeing them or if in fact for some reason there are more.  Wondering if anyone else has noticed this phenomena.

4.  Why is it?

My brother comes over and cooks a sauce; the same stuff I cook all the time.  The kids devour it.  I cook the sauce.  The kids want anything but what I'm serving.  Think I'll tell them different people came over and fixed dinner when they weren't looking from now on and see if packaging and the right sponsorship makes a difference in appetites.  I'm willing to be a ghost chef if they actually eat.  

 5. Driving me Nuts

I've lost one day's worth of mail.  I don't know what it was.  I don't know if there were any bills. I can't find any missing but I also just don't know what came.  My daughter brought up the stack and put it on the table and no one has seen it since.  Prayers to Saint Anthony would be appreciated.  On the bright side, it has helped me clean out a lot of junk from my cubbies full of stuff. 

6.  Fixing his little red wagon

It's not a joke or a threat, it's a fact.  For three days, my son has been on me to build his radio flyer and for three days, I've put it off in part because of timing, lack of the proper tools and the rest of the day taking over, and because I'm engineering impaired.  Today, I put down the laptop and pick up the pliers and screwdriver.  That poor boy does not know how mechanic free my fingers are; but he will learn soon enough.  Here's hoping the thing is operationally functional when I get done.  

7. The Next Food Network Star

My kids and I love the show except for the gratuitous swearing that seems to be constant; I've had to limit who can watch.  We have a beef however with the creators who ran a contest where the would be cooks had to create dinner in 20 minutes using cereals to simulate the stress of busy moms.  The problem with the concept was what the chefs cooked.  The meals they presented would be rejected by virtually every child in America.  Two examples of the cuisine were tuna encrusted with rice krispies and Quinoa All Bran.  I'm thinking "Oh yeah. My six year old can't wait to dig in to that one."  Here's what a busy mom would do folks if all they had was breakfast stuff.  They'd take the cereal, put it in a bowl and add milk.  If they wanted extra nutrition, they might cut up banana.  Dinner in five minutes.  Tadah!