It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Most Chaotic of Times

It's Catholic Schools Week. My schedule is full. Enough said.

Our annual fundraiser is coming up for the kids' school. Among items that go up for silent auction, each class completes an art project that goes up for bid. I'm working on the 2nd grade and 5th/6th grade projects. I'm busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest. Enough said.

As mentioned in my previous post, my son is preparing for his First Communion and First Reconciliation. There are extra things that have to be done for that, workshops, etc. Enough said.

The dogs are going crazy. Maia and Natasha escaped on Saturday, and we spent over an hour chasing them down. More dog-proofing to be done around here...Enough said.

Speaking of dogs, it appears that I tore my rotator cuff back in October when Skyy caused me to slam into a sign at school. The bruise that was roughly the size of Rhode Island disappeared after a couple of weeks, but my arm still hurts like a mo fo, so I thought something might be Not Quite Right with it. Looks like physical therapy for me, as if I'm not busy enough. Enough said.

First Communicant in Black

It's hard to believe, but that little baby boy of mine is quickly approaching his First Communion. April 13th, to be exact. Where has the time gone? I thought he was born just a couple of years ago...

But I digress. In keeping with the eccentric qualities of most of the members of my family (I think they get it from my side!), J.P., my John Patrick, has decided that he wants to wear a black suit for his First Communion formal wear. Not so odd, you say? Hey, I'm not finished. He also wants to wear a black dress shirt and a black tie along with black dress shoes. Yes, black from head to toe. Um, why does my boy want to wear all black while he receives one of the Sacraments of the Church, you may ask? Is he a Goth child? An anti-Christ wannabe? The black sheep, so to speak, among a sea of white frilly First Communicant little girls?

None of the above, actually. He's a Johnny Cash fan. He wants to be The Man in Black during his First Communion. Oh, and he wants a pair of dark sunglasses and a black fedora so that afterwards, he can be the "skinny guy" from the Blues Brothers.

I haven't decided if we're raising him right or contributing to the need for extensive therapy when he's grown up. At any rate, at least nobody can accuse us of being too conventional.

Strange Dreams

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night, the vestiges of some dream still dancing around in your sleep-fogged brain, and think, "Wow! That would be a great story! Brilliant!" And you reach for something write it all down so you won't forget it in the bright morning sunlight.

Of course, what appears a brilliant plot line in the soft moonlight while you're still drugged with sleep often strikes you as quite psychotic in the harsh light of day once you've consumed the requisite amount of caffeine to function throughout the day, and then you realize that if you wrote THAT, people would think you're crazier than a shit house rat.

Yeah, that happened to me again last night, or rather this morning. I woke up around 3 a.m., a circumstance that really is not all that unusual, and I felt that the Muse had been visiting me in my dreams. I jotted down a few phrases, fragments from my nighttime reveries. I'm looking at them now and thinking, "I need to be committed to an institution for the terminally insane."

Still, I might write something about it for the hell of it, so if you see a story about an Incan Monkey God, the involvement of the Spanish Inquisition (NOBODY expects it, you know!), lost ancient language tablets, the mythic city of El Dorado (language is gold?), and a place called Demon Island City, then you know that my insanity has been purged.

Snow!

We woke up to a winter wonderland this morning. Okay, so it was only about 3 or 4 inches, but here in the South, that is a Big Deal. Snow and South Carolina generally do not go together, so those rare occasions when we are graced with its presence, well, we go a bit crazy, unlike in my native Kentucky, where we're already crazy, so a bit of snow doesn't add to it.

Anyway, the dogs LOVED it. The back yard was a scene of Huskies Gone Wild, with dogs running everywhere, jumping and leaping over tree branches that had been cut down. And that reminds me of a song.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2nJn6rZdtI


Tomorrow should return to normal, with kids back in school, and that is a Good Thing. I can only handle so much of this Snow Day/Missing School stuff!

Webkinz, Wolves, and Chihuahuas, Oh My!

My kids have really gotten into this whole webkinz craze lately. In case you have been living in a cave and don't know what webkinz are, they are these stuffed animals that come with cards that have a log-on code. You log into Webkinz World with that code, and there is your pet! You can do jobs and play games to earn kinz cash that you can then use to buy food and other things for your pet. Kids can also connect with each other and give gifts to each other. My kids and my niece are connected to each other and do this all the time. Among the three of them, I would estimate that they have around 5,000 webkinz pets. Okay, so I exaggerate, but they have several pets, including various cats, dogs, a panda bear, a gorilla, and who knows what else. The room here often fills with the sounds of games such as Cash Cow and this other game where a little Chihuahua comes on and talks about his bean and his sombrero and his candy.

Speaking of Chihuahuas, are they really dogs? I mean, supposedly they are, but I saw one at Petsmart a couple of days ago being pushed around in the shopping cart by its owners. It had a little glittery collar on, and the owners were shopping for little sweaters for it. I assume it needed them because the poor thing was shivering. Either it was cold or scared or neurotic. Based on the few I've encountered in the past, I'm going with the latter.

It's just rather difficult to place the little rodent-like creatures in the Canine Category. When you consider that our present-day domestic canine companions are descendants of wolves, and then you look at a Chihuahua, it's hard to reconcile. They don't exactly look Lupine, you know. A Siberian Husky...now THERE is a dog that looks like it was descended from a wolf. Okay, okay, so I'm biased, but look at what I mean.

The picture on the far left is a grey wolf. The middle picture is Sitka, one of my Siberian Huskies. You can definitely see some similarities there. Furthermore, Huskies exhibit a lot of wolf-like behaviours, particularly in their pack structure. I won't go into boring details here. But believe me, they are "wolf lites." And to the far right, we have the Chihuahua. Do you see the wolf in it? Other than a long snout, I don't.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against Chihuahuas. I love the Taco Bell dog. I don't like Taco Bell, but I love the Taco Bell dog. If I could find one that speaks Spanish like that, I'd even consider getting a Chihuahua, but I'm afraid my Huskies would just consider it a snack.

My grandfather actually raised the things after he retired from the Army. Imagine this big military man, retired Lt. Col., Army surgeon, going ga-ga over a pack of Chihuahuas. It defies logic. My sister in Kentucky, Becky, has a teacup Chihuahua named Sauza. As if a regular Chihuahua isn't small enough, this little pooch would nearly fit into my cell phone holder! Sauza has gotten lost a few times, and I can see why. She's even smaller than my kids' Guinea Pigs! But she is an amusing little thing. Becky can tell her to "Praise Jesus!" and Sauza, as well as Becky's other dog, a Yorkie-Poo named Sadie, will hop up on her back legs, front paws reaching to the sky, and the two dogs will dance around in circles! Charismatic canines...I'm sure some would say I'm going to hell on a bobsled, but it makes me laugh. Of course, those same people probably think I'm going to hell on a bobsled because I'm a heathen Catholic...

In the meantime, my howling honeys call to me. Time to feed the wild bunch.

Of Bees, Shoes, and Demonic Barbers

My daughter will forever remember how to spell "nebbish." That is the word she missed at the regional spelling bee last Thursday, spelling it with one "b" instead of two. Still, she made it through several rounds and spelled several difficult words before she struck out on that one, and the fact that she was a winner from the school and made it that far was quite impressive. The most important thing, however, was the fact that she enjoyed herself and was happy with her own performance.

Incidentally, a nebbish, of Yiddish origin, is defined as "a timid, meek, or ineffectual person" according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Rebekah is definitely NOT a nebbish!

After the spelling bee, my husband, the dear Czech Pecker, took me out for some Indian cuisine. The mini-me, Rebekah, abandoned us to dine with her nana. The food was excellent, but I had to WALK several blocks, an event that I had not planned for, and thus, the shoes I wore did not qualify as comfortable walking shoes. They are, however, Very Cute Shoes. See?

I love these shoes, and they're fine for short distances, but the arch support sucks. By the time I had walked several blocks to the restaurant, dined on a delicious subcontinental lunch, which offered a brief respite for my size 7's, and hiked back to the parking garage, I was creeping along, looking like a person walking on hot coals. I received a few strange looks. I came home and looked for vodka.

By Saturday, I was sufficiently recovered to head out to the movie theatre with friend to see Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. (Official movie site http://www.sweeneytoddmovie.com/). It was incredible. Really, I don't presently have the words to review it sufficiently, but I thought it was simply amazing. I absolutely loved it.

In the meantime, the dogs are still wreaking havoc around here, as always. Skyy hasn't eaten any additional books, though, so I suppose that's good. Sitka is trying to wean her pups and tries to escape from them whenever she can. I know how she feels. The hours when my kids are at school are generally quite blissful.

Tuesday Disappeared Off My Calendar

I went on a field trip with my son's class yesterday, a group of 2nd grade Catholic school kids, to a science center where they learned first about weather, then did a lesson on amphibians and reptiles. It took up most of my day, but I'm not complaining. It was actually quite fun, especially with the other parents who went along, too. We were Catholic Parents Behaving Badly.

The first session was about the weather and meteorology. The highlight here were the tornadoes-in-bottles. You know, these are the things where you take two plastic 2-litre bottles, fill one with water, and connect them together with a plastic tube, like this one that you can get at http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/product/1226. When you tip the "hourglass" over and swirl it around vigorously, a "tornado" appears inside the bottle. Pretty cool, huh? The addition of various little plastic toys inside the hourglasses made the activity even more entertaining, particularly for the adults. Two dads were present, and their tornado bottle had a little plastic dog in it. We were quite amused by Toto spinning around, and we kept bursting out with phrases like "Auntie Em! Auntie Em!" in between hysterical laughter. We also made suggestions for other toys we could put in, like a little plastic bicycle and witch. I thought a little plastic cow would be great.

After a picnic lunch, we headed to the session on amphibians and reptiles. Frogs and snakes. The kids were REALLY excited about this one. I was lukewarm about it. I mean, I've been married 16 1/2 years, so snakes really do nothing for me. The instructor was showing various snake skins to the kids, then she showed them under the microscope to demonstrate some of the major differences among various types of snakes. She made the comment that "not all snakes are created equally." My son's teacher and I looked at each other and smirked.

The ball python the instructor showed to the kids was quite pretty, though. He had a really nice pattern. Contrary to what many people believe about snakes, they are not cold and slimy feeling at all. They are dry and smooth to the touch. The other snake she had to show was a rat snake. He had just shed his old skin, so he had his nice new skin, and he was really shiny. He looked like he was ready for a night on the town!

In her talk about snakes, the instructor mentioned that when she was hiking in the fall, she had encountered a couple of ringneck snakes, except she had a slip of the tongue when she first said it, and she called them "redneck" snakes. Naturally, everyone laughed, but the adults laughed the loudest and the longest. I turned to another mother and whispered, "So, does a redneck snake slither along with a small 6-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and listen to Bocephus on his apodal iPod?" When I relayed this story later, my good friend Annette, who is also the godmother to my hellions, um, children, added, "I thought it might hiss out 'FREEBIRD'!"

Now that I think of it, I might find a tiny plastic snake and tiny beer can to add to my tornado hourglass when I make it.

I have Goth toenails

That's what my daughter tells me. I went for a pedi/mani today, just because I deserved it, dammit, and I decided to go for something a bit different on my toes--black, with a darling little flower design on my big toe. My daughter took one look and said, "Oh my God...you have Goth toes, Mom." Okay. Well, why not? Sometimes, a mother has to be a bit dark, especially when the kids in question are mine.

Speaking of pedicures, I really want one of those spa pedicure chairs in my home. Dear 8 pound 8 ounce baby Jesus, the massage function on them is to die for. I wanted to stay there and take a nap for the remainder of the afternoon, but I had a feeling the ladies who worked there would find that exceedingly odd, plus my children kind of expected me to pick them up from school. That's too bad because for a few brief, blissful minutes, I felt relaxed and stress-free. Reality has a way of intruding, alas.

Reality included coming home to a house that had been Huskied. Skyy had decided to let me know of her displeasure in being left home from this particular outing by consuming a couple of books, one on heraldry and another by Jean-Paul Sartre. I am guessing that existentialism is not to her liking. Who would have guessed? After all, she's Russian.

A Blog About Nothing

In the spirit of Seinfeld, I am declaring that my blog will be a blog about Nothing. Please note that it is Nothing with a capital "N." I don't know what the hell that means, but it sounds good. I make no claim that I will ramble on about intellectual subjects, and I doubt very seriously I'll give my 2 cents on the latest celebrity stunts, mainly because I don't particularly give a rat's ass what they're doing in Hollywood these days. I love watching the History Channel, not because I'm especially brilliant or anything, but because I actually like it. I really like the Naked Archaeology guy, Simcha I-forget-his-last-name. See...told you I'm not that brilliant. Anyway, I love his show and the way he goes about uncovering the various historical mysteries in the Bible. Since I don't take the stuff in that book literally, I like to read about and watch the shows where they try to discover the history behind the stories.

And now, for something completely different. It is the Feast of the Epiphany, and my blasted Christmas tree is still up. That sucker is coming DOWN today. I'm tired of looking at it, and I want my house back to normal. Okay, my house is never "normal" in the way that most people would define it, but I want it back to my definition of normal, which does not include a Christmas tree in the middle of my living room. I might have multiple Siberian Huskies running through the house, on their way out the door to do whatever Huskies do, playing their Husky games and howling their Husky howls, and that might mean leaving a trail of shedding Husky undercoat that has to be swept up. That is probably not normal for most people. It's my normal.

Oh, and quick word of advice. If you have a Husky and a favourite pair of shoes, please make sure those shoes are put out of reach of your beloved canine. I have some dead shoes to show for my negligence in this area. I held the appropriate funeral for the shoes and have since put my remaining shoes on lockdown. To appease the beast, I pulled some older shoes out that I have not worn in around five years or more. For some reason, she does not seem overly interested in those. Bitch.