Guess what? Sam is like Chris.

Yesterday morning, Sam was sitting on my bed watching TV and getting dressed for school.

Well, actually, what he was doing was sitting on my bed, watching TV with his mouth hanging open, clutching a limply dangling shirt in his immobile hand.

"Sam!"

The shirt would twitch closer to his body.

"Sam!"

He'd open the bottom of the shirt.

"Sam!"

He'd begin to put one hand in the sleeve.

"Sam!"

Eventually I made him go to his room and get dressed. He emerged five seconds later, fully clothed.

It was notable, this television hypnosis, and I wondered if maybe it wasn't a good thing.


That night, Chris and I are in the kitchen. I'd been loading the dishwasher while Biggest Loser was on the TV. Sam comes in and asks for some milk.

Two minutes later I turn around and see Chris, his hand on the open refrigerator door, staring at the TV, mouth hanging open.

It wasn't even the weigh-in, people. They were just jogging on treadmills.

Just a few of the people that irked me yesterday

Yesterday was one of those days where I wonder if humanity is really as necessary as I've been led to believe.

I was irked by:

1) The girls standing next to me while waiting for the shuttle who had a conversation that went like this:

"Oh the snow!"

"I know!" - Huge guffaws of laughter

"So where are you from?"

"Arizona, but Nairobi originally."

"Oh WOW. Do you think you'll ever go back there?"

"Well, I visit every year, except probably not this year." - Huge guffaws of laughter - but why?

"Oh, well the snow must be new to you."

"Well I went to college in upstate New York, so I've seen snow!" - laughter, of the huge sort.

"NO WAY! I went to college in Vermont!"

"Are you SERIOUS?!"

"Yeah! I grew up in Vermont, all my brothers and sisters grew up there too!"

"Are you FOR REAL?! WOW!"

"Yeah, but my sister-in-law is from Florida and when she came here she'd never seen the snow before and when she came she was all, 'It's so cold!'" - here the Nairobi girl actually half collapses with laughter.

It went on from there, but you get the point. A lot of amazement and laughter that seemed uncalled for. On the shuttle I contemplated what it must be like to live life in such an expansive way. I concluded that she was covering some severe emotional pain with all that interest and laughter.


2) The shuttle. The shuttle irritated me mightily. It seems like every time I clamber on to head back to my office the shuttle driver decides to take his 20 minute break. So that happened. I was sitting on the shuttle to nowhere, like a piece of installation art. Every so often a new person would walk up to the shuttle, pull the doors open, and climb on board. Then one person walked up to the shuttle doors and stood there, clearly perplexed by the situation. She looked around for the driver and then just sort of stood there. While the poor girl is standing outside, the people sitting inside are heckling her - "does she expect someone to open the doors for her!" (is that unreasonable?), "is she just going to stand there?" "What an idiot!"

It seemed like a darker side of humanity. Mostly because I could totally see myself in that situation. Did you all know that that was the appropriate thing to do in that situation? Because, actually, when I first tried to board this same shuttle bus, while the driver was actually behind the wheel, he honked me imperiously away from the door because he had not yet pulled up to the exact shuttle-stopping spot. For "safety" reasons he explained when he eventually deigned to let me board. But it is safe for us to pry open the doors to an unattended but running shuttle bus?

3) But don't think this woman is the victim here. When someone up front finally opened the door for her, she sat next to me. As we are driving, I want to let this poor, abused, woman know that some of us are friendly people, so I decided I will chat with her. "At least the roads look like they are clearing up in time for rush hour," I said. While this is neither fascinating nor profound, it's relatively innocuous, right? She ignores me COMPLETELY. Do you know what it's like when you have sent a statement out into the world and it just hangs there? It's pretty uncomfortable.

Honestly. People.

See wha had happen was . . .

A lot of boring stuff.

It was sick kids, sick Chris, Christmas, sick kids, Florida, sick me, blah, blah, blah.

Florida was good this year. Owen perfected the art of shooting fireballs. He used to just shoot them with his eyes, but now he knows that you have to point your finger and say "pssshw" for maximum impact.

Since we got back from Florida, Owen has cried every time he had to go outside.

I understand, man.

When I picked the boys up at school on Monday, Sam said, "We're going to dinner at Hoppa Homma's house today!"

"Not this Monday, buddy, they are still in Florida."

"WHAT?! They need to come HOME."

"I know, I miss them too."

"I don't MISS THEM, they just need to come home because they are just STAYING in Florida and NOT COMING HOME so now I can't go to their house for dinner and that's not fair and they just need to come HOME and stop staying in Florida so much."

And Owen said, "But Homma is pwetty nice to me."

And Sam said, "OWENAH. Stop disreplacing me!"

And Owen said, "But she is. She made me a Homma bwanket because she's got a wot of yarn."

"OWEN. That doesn't even got anything to DO with Florida."

"Yes it does. She had yarn in Florida."

Touche.

I boggle my own mind

My body has been falling apart of late. My elbow hurts and I have rashes and I sprained my thumb, I think.

Oh. Just found a hair in my cereal. Going to assume it is mine. Whatever. It was, like, the last five rice Chex anyway and they were getting soggy. Which is why Cheerios are the best cereal in the world. Because they don't get soggy. They just get better. I don't understand why the soggy cereal problem is so prevalent. Do the manufacturers not understand that I'm about to put it in milk? It seems that there is a disconnect somewhere. Either between cereal makers and us, or between me and the rest of the world that doesn't have the same problem with soggy cereal that I do.

Where was I?

Oh, my sprained thumb. Also, I'm forgetful and easily distracted.

So, my thumb hurts. It hurts most when I am pressing the button on the car seats that releases the strap. You wouldn't think it would be that much of a problem, but I am releasing my children from their car seats a surprising percentage of my day.

But what am I supposed to do? It's not like I can leave them in there, tempting as it may be. And it's not really feasible to always get somebody else to do it.

So I've just been pushing through the pain for about a month now. I try to bend it at a different angle so it doesn't hurt as much, but otherwise, a mom's got to do what a mom's got to do, you know?

Then, last night, I came up with a solution so brilliant, so out-of-the-box, so mind-blowingly GENIUS, that you probably thought about it at the beginning of this post.

Instead of using my RIGHT thumb to press the button, I could use my LEFT, non-hurting, thumb.

Happy Chanukkah

Wow. I totally thought Chanukkah started with an "H."

Not that I had much of an idea where to go from there.

Haunika?
Hanukka?
Hounaca?

I was so far off that google couldn't even figure out what I meant.

So I looked up a list of Jewish holidays and at Judaism101.com it said "Chanukkah." You learn something new every day.

Anyway.

I picked the kids up at daycare the other day and Sam said "Happy Chanukkah, Mom!"

"Thanks Sam. Happy Chanukkah to you, too."

"Mom?"

"What."

"What are we going to do for Chanukkah?"

"Um. Not much really. We don't celebrate Chanukkah."

"But we celebrate Halloweeeeeeen" (with just a hint of whine and a dash of outrage).

"I cannot argue with that, my friend."

"So why don't we celebrate Chanukkah?!"

"It's just one of those things, buddy."

"But I like dessert!"

I really don't know how to respond to that.

BTW, Judaism101.com, I just spellchecked this post and spellcheck begs to differ about Hanukkah.

"Mom?"

"Yeah, Sam?"

"Do you know Michael Injaction?"

"Um . . . yeah? Where did you hear about him? He was a singer?"

"He is died."

"Whoa. Where did you hear that?"

"He is died because he ate a rug."

"Oh. Yeah. Well. Where did you HEAR that?"

"Cayden told me."

Apparently Cayden is going to kindergarten at E Weekly.

Goldfish have no memories

At work, we collect data.

We must then enter the data into a database.

The process of accessing the database goes like this:

1) Go to website
2) Put in log-on information
3) Wait 2 seconds for phone to ring
4) Answer phone, type in password

You are now logged on.

I would say, that probably 95% of the time I forget what I'm doing during step three and am surprised when the phone rings.

It goes like this:

1) Put in log on information
2) Wait for phone to ring
3) Man, look at how hard it's raining!
4) Oooo! A phone call! I wonder who it is?!
5) Oh, right, it's the database.

or this:

1) Log on
2) Wait for phone
3) I need to text Jessica.
4) Oooo! A phone call! I wonder who it is?!
5) Oh, right, it's the database.

but probably mostly like this:

1) Log on
2) Wait for pho . . . Oooo! A shiny!