Children’s Books That Didn’t Make It:

1. You Are Different and That’s Bad
2. The Boy Who Died From Eating All His Vegetables
3. Dad’s New Wife Robert
4. Fun four-letter Words to Know and Share
5. Hammers, Screwdrivers and Scissors: An I-Can-Do-It Book
6. The Kids’ Guide to Hitchhiking
7. Kathy Was So Bad Her Mom Stopped Loving Her
8. Curious George and the High-Voltage Fence
9. All Cats Go to Hell
10. The Little Sissy Who Snitched
11. Some Kittens Can Fly.
12. That’s it, I’m Putting You Up for Adoption
13. Grandpa Gets a Casket
14. The Magic World Inside the Abandoned Refrigerator
15. Garfield Gets Feline Leukemia
16. The Pop-Up Book of Human Anatomy
17. Strangers Have the Best Candy
18. Whining, Kicking and Crying to Get Your Way
19. You Were an Accident
20. Things Rich Kids Have, But You Never Will
21. Pop! Goes The Hamster…And Other Great Microwave Games
22. The Man in the Moon Is Actually Satan
23. Your Nightmares Are Real
24. Where Would You Like to Be Buried?
25. Eggs, Toilet Paper, and Your School
26. Why Can’t Mr. Fork and Ms. Electrical Outlet Be Friends?
27. Places Where Mommy and Daddy Hide Neat Things
28. Daddy Drinks Because You Cry

“With your feet I walk
I walk with your limbs
I carry forth your body
For me your mind thinks
Your voice speaks for me
Beauty is before me
And beauty is behind me
Above and below me hovers the beautiful
I am surrounded by it
I am immersed in it
In my youth I am aware of it
And in old age I shall walk quietly
The beautiful trail.”

— Navajo prayer

How, oh how, Wacky Mommy, you ask, did you get your house and life so organized? People, you need to do this:

* Decide you’re moving, thus you need to get the house ready to sell. (Or you need to get your rental fixed up to get your deposits back.) Begin putting things in boxes.
* Change your whole outlook.
* Change your whole life.

(PS to the guys who think that it’s up to their wives to get them organized. No, no, no. All of this is not “woman’s work,” whatever the hell that outdated expression means. She needs you/you need her/do this together please, thank you.)

Honestly, you would not believe the number we’ve done on our house since we’ve started talking about relocating. My. Friends. Are. Jealous! Ha. (My friends are rarely jealous of me. Mostly they call me, saying things like, “Honey. I’m worried about you.” I love my friends, their loyalty, their relentlessness.)

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Would Che Guevara play hockey, if he were alive today? Will we move to Iowa sooner or later? Should children be allowed to freely swear? If you commit suicide, are you going to Hell? These and other questions, on today’s edition of Thursday Thirteeeeeeeeeeeeeen…

13. Hockey God: “If Che had been Canadian instead of Argentine, he would have played hockey.”

12. This, from the man who designed a T-shirt with (what else?) a pic on the front of Che, suited up in hockey gear. More Hockey/Less War. Cafe Press banned it. Good for them. Someone needs to put a leash on Hockey God, and it’s not going to be me.

11. This, from the man who insisted on playing hockey on Sunday and refused to go on the huge peace march in downtown Portland, Ore. (I was glad, later, that we hadn’t gone. Arrests, pepper spray, some fights, “Little Beirut” reigns again.)

10. “I’m cold because you didn’t bring my damn gloves!” (Wacky Boy, yelling at me at the park, when I suggested he put on his coat.)

9. FYI, my late father is not in Hell for committing suicide, you freaks and trolls who have suggested as much. Hell is saved for you.

8. Swearing? These two blonde children of mine (ages 4 & 7) curse like sailors. I’m not so cool with this, yet am unwilling to stop swearing. Swearing serves a purpose in my life. Their father has suggested a Free Swear day, where our kids get to cuss all day as much as they want. Only not at school. We had some additional discussion on the following topics: Is “suck” a bad word? Is saying “Oh. My. GOD!” a bad word? Is “stupid” a bad word? I have not the words, honestly.

7. Wacky Boy has started a rewards system for his dad and me. We get post-it notes, with “NICE!” or “U ROCK!” scribbled on the top whenever we behave. Who named him boss? Not me — that’s for frickin’ sure. I mean — damn sure. I mean — darn sure.

6. I want to move to Iowa yesterday. “I WANT TO MOVE TO IOWA YESTERDAY, TOO!” says Wacky Boy. “Can we do that?” No, we cannot, son. Wacky Girl: “I’m fine, either way. Stay, go, move to somewhere else in Portland. I wouldn’t mind staying in Portland ’til it’s after my birthday.” (Next September.) (Also, we’ve discussed moving to heinous Beaverton to be closer to my husband’s work.) “We need to wait a year, then go,” says my husband. I’ll keep you posted.

5. In the meantime, I’ve started looking for work. Here and in Iowa. Because you never know…

4. Wacky Girl gets ice cream when she gets an “11” (all words spelled correctly, plus the challenge word) on her weekly spelling test. This week she got… less than 11. And wrote BLAH BLAH BLAH on the bottom of her test. To which her teacher responded, “Oh, no!”

3. Wacky Girl: “Don’t let Dad see that, willya?”

2. Everyone here has spring fever.

1. I’m still getting the inside of the house painted, move or no move.

HAPPY THURSDAY, YINS!

Because really, there is no point in sticking your head in the oven over it.

Get some Thai food and call it a night.

“I stuck the letter back in the envelope, Scotch-taped it together, and readdressed it to Buddy, without putting on a new stamp. I thought the message was worth a good three cents. Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.”

— Sylvia Plath, “The Bell Jar”

* Marbles
* Trains & train tracks
* Trucks
* Tin boxes
* Wax paper from small rounds of cheese
* Tiny dinosaurs
* Duplos
* Legos
* Blocks

May the Lord keep you in
His hand
And never close His fist too
tight on you.

May you live to be
a hundred years
With one extra year
to repent.

May the grass grow long
On the road to Hell
For want of use.

May you have warm words
on a cold evening,
a full moon on a dark
night,
And the road downhill all
the way to your door.

“Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.”
— Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

“Should Chuck E. Cheese sell booze?” Such a no-brainer. No.

Yeah, you thought I was going to say yes, didn’t you? You do need a Valium IV, or a handful of Xanax, or a fifth of Absolut to get through the Chuck E. Cheese experience. We went for a birthday party the other night — and true to form, the kids had a blast and I became a screaming bitch from hell. But more later about the ride home.

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My friend started a blog! How exciting… She’s MamaToo at Blogspot. Go tell her hello.

(Edited to say — whoops! I forgot to link!)

13. I could whistle like our neighbors’ guinea pigs. I trained the little rodents to run to me.

12. 1 loved to eat frozen lemonade concentrate straight out of the can.

11. I devoured Pixie Stix.

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