A few links, and a recipe, because I think you need ’em. Also a tiny bit of advice.

Love,

WM

For the kiddies:
Eloise — “I am a city child/I live at the Plaza.”
The World’s Youngest Blogger
Nancy Drew

From my kids’ wish lists:

Wacky Girl: 1) big house 2) big screen TV 3) lifetime supply of candy

Wacky Boy: 1) big house with a swamp in his room 2) a pen with 200 gallons of ink so it wouldn’t run out of ink

For breakfast this weekend:
from J’s thoughts and musings:

Company French Toast

1 ½ Sticks Butter
6 Eggs
1 ½ tsp. Cinnamon
2 cups Milk
1 ½ cup Brown Sugar
Syrup
*White Bread (Pepperidge Farm Toasting)

Melt butter in bottom of 9×13 casserole dish.
Add brown sugar and cinnamon: Mix and spread on bottom
Cut Crust off bread (personal choice here….) and layer bread 2 slices deep.

In separate bowl:
Beat together eggs and milk
Pour mixture over bread in casserole dish
Cover and refrigerate overnight

Bake uncovered 30-40 minutes in 350º
Drizzle maple syrup and broil until brown and bubbly.
Broil for 5 minutes or less.

*Note: The Canadian White bread is just as good as the Pepperidge Farm bread.

for you foodies:
The Smitten Kitchen
Ms. Dorie
Epicurious
and one just for the kids

Throw caution to the wind! Go bake a cake or make a vegetable dip or something. Cheese straws, perhaps.

For you gardeners… Were you aware that Miracle-Gro is now making an Organic Choice formula? Will wonders never cease?
Gardening With Lil Children
Rough Terrain
The Edible Schoolyard

(And for those of you needing to de-stress…)
Just Bubbles
Sex Tips for the Rest of Us (wherein women’s breasts do not bob up at top of website, thank you!)
…and last, but certainly not least, we have “Lock the Bedroom Door.” All I can say is — whoa.

Dear Wacky Mommy,

Losing Hope

Dear Hope,

Yes. Who can turn the world on with her smile? Who can take a nothing date, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? Well, it’s you girl and you should know it! With each glance and every little movement you show it… Love is all around, no need to waste it…

No, jeez, of course you can’t have it all, and thank God for small favors because what would you do with it all once you got it? But you can have 1) Grey’s Anatomy re-runs 2) Bosom Buddies on DVD 3) some flowers to watch grow 4) that next breath you inhale. And that, for tonight, is enough.

Love,

WM

Thirteeners! It’s still Thursday, if my calendar is right. I am not too late to post. I am short on time, however, as my husband just left for a baseball game with his buddy, leaving me in charge of bedtime for two small children.

It’s a shocker, really, having to put my own kids to bed. But since I’ve started back to work (it feels so weird to type that), he’s been totally responsible for getting them out the door in the morning. So it’s only fair.

Here ya go: 13 Things I’d Blog About Right Now if I Could Grab a Minute (or Ten). (And no links, cuz no time. Sorry.)

1) My love for General Hospital and Land of the Lost and their weird correlation in my head.

2) A treatise on the magic of duct tape.

3) Teen Parenthood: Why It’s a Great Idea, as written by frazzled 42-year-old housewife. Oops, working outside of the home wife.

4) My new schedule and why it rocks! (Except for mid-afternoon, when I can barely keep my eyes open cuz I get up so early now. And once we get home, when I survey the chaos around me. Don’t forget the immortal words of Erma Bombeck: It takes wet laundry three days to mold.) How in spite of all this… I love working. I love earning my own money. I love getting a break. I love being around people who don’t chant SPONGEBOB SQUARE PANTS spongebob square pants SPONGE BOB! SQUARE PANTS! all. frickin’. day. long.

5) Dress codes. My office has one and the kids’ school does not. Q&A with myself.

6) Potatoes! Corn! Hollyhocks! And all the wonders of my garden and yard. A photo essay.

7) How I bit my tongue and didn’t scream, “TAKE HER BACK TO THE POUND! QUICK! NOW!!!! BEFORE YOU GET MORE ATTACHED TO HER!” when my co-worker described her sweet lil black Lab pup. Aren’t Labs the best? So well-behaved! Except for when she tore out her stitches after surgery. And destroyed the flower bed. And how she keeps them up all night, because she’s lonely. I just showed her a picture of Wacky Dog and smiled.

8) My husband’s beloved Buffalo Sabres. Will they bite the dust in the series?

9) My intrigue with the book “The Feminine Mistake,” by Leslie Bennetts. Can I blog about it without stoking the fires of the Mommy Wars? Yes, I believe I can.

10) Lice. Are we shut of them for good, pray tell?

11) Kids. Why I’m Thrilled I Have Two and Not More. Would include a sidebar: Must every conversation include one of the following: Butts, underwear (their own and other people’s), people’s butts being set on fire, people who can set other people’s butts on fire, poop, pee, farting, booties, how they are Lords of the Buttfire? (I just read that paragraph aloud to them and they literally crashed onto the floor laughing.)

12) Summer plans. Including a discussion of why I won’t be able to hang out laundry because neighbor’s cherry tree is insane out of control. Includes a brief re-cap of the discussion I had with my tree guy, who advised that we move rather than mess with this tree. Sidebar: Will we ever move? An update.

13) My inability to plan ahead.

Happy Thursday, everyone.

WM

I’d like to say that I got up earlier than usual, just so I could post, but that would be a lie. I’m running late. I haven’t had my coffee. But I know when I go to read my favorite blogs and they haven’t updated, I get grouchy. Grouchy! How lame is that, to let the Information Superhighway dictate your moods? Y’all are great writers and photographers — I need my fix of your art. Oh, yeah — you’re great moms, too. But today, that is third on the list of your accomplishments.

* We’re still planning on moving to Iowa. No job offers yet. In the meantime, maybe I should… (more…)

Happy Mother’s Day, one and all, but especially to my Wacky Mom, my two sweet mother-in-laws (see you this summer!), and my Incredibly Wacky Grandma!

Zip, i love you.

And now, a couple or re-runs worth repeating.

wm

from May, 2006
“This week, Salary.com announced that a stay-at-home mom’s work is worth $134,121 a year. But the check is not in the mail.”
– Ellen Goodman

…………………………………

Mother’s Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their sons. Here is the original Mother’s Day Proclamation from 1870, followed by a bit of “herstory”:

“Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says “Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”

Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870

So many things I would like to blog about — such as…

* the PTA mom who said, “Good, do!” in our meeting today when I said, “one-more-thing-and-I’ll-shut-up-I-promise.” Nice! Way to open up the lines of communication. No wonder no one wants to work with you, honey. Damn. Speaking of work — THE PAID KIND…

* Work: Why It Just Might Be the Answer I’ve Been Looking For (lunches out with other adults! No one criticizing my food! People complimenting my shoes! The list goes on and on…) (more…)

Hola, what’s happening, 13ers? Do my kids like to watch movies? They can watch the hell out of a movie! Or thirteen.

Happy Thursday!

Our 13 Favorite Flicks Ever, Kid-Wise

13. Prehistoric Planet

12. Cheaper by the Dozen (One, not Two)

11. Muppets from Space

10. The Little Vampire

9. Homeward Bound

8. Nanny McPhee

7. Matilda

6. Home movies from when they were babies (these are my favorite movies, too)

5. The Aristocats (Aristocats! Not the Aristocrats!)

4. Land Before Time series

3. Molly: American Girl

2. Wallace and Gromit

1. The Apple Dumpling Gang

Remember this, ladies, as we head into margarita/mojito season:

“It’s OK to drink, just don’t drink and drink.”

— WM and Zip

There is funny, and then there is Tina, who needs her own special category cuz she is crazy-ass funny.

I tag her for a meme and she comes up with:

4. I have long stated that bell peppers don’t agree with me. And while that may have been true at one point, I think now it’s just more that I’m a pussy about them. And now it is a very small project of mine to re-introduce the bell pepper into my diet. Take it one day at a time. No promises.

and follows that with:

5. There’s a freckle on my left foot that I believe renders it unbearably hot. That foot is smokin’. Like a French actress. Like a sex kitten. I have a crush on it.

See? Funny girl. Go over there and say hi.

I forgot about work. Working-outside-of-the-home work. I work — I write; I get paid little or nothing for it. (Note to self: Put up PayPal button in hopes that people will donate to the cause. The cause being: Me and My Entertaining Self.) I watch the kids; I get paid in lovebucks. I am married; because of this I am well-shod, like a prize horse. He has also been known, my husband, to take me for dinner and a night on the town.

But a real job? Where you fill out paperwork and a W-4, and have to call your husband about how many deductions to claim (because when I work, we lose money. What with daycare, and taxes, and the cost of gas, etc. etc. ad nauseum) and it’s all a little baffling? That kind of work I haven’t done in three years. Yes, that’s right — he also had to do a Google map search for me so I could figure out where I was going. (Thanks, hon.)

Even though this is an employer I have worked for before, and I know where the building is. I actually had to go to two buildings, located ten minutes apart. I knew where both buildings were. I just spaced. Oh, please, like that never happens to you? I needed my husband to hold my (virtual) hand and walk me through this. Pathetic!

I cannot give you many details about my job or workplace, because in the words of the almighty Dooce: “Be ye not so stupid.” And don’t get dooced, fer Chrissake. I will tell you the following, and I will tell you in bullets:

* Someone nice is watching after the kids.

* There is a Baja Fresh by my work and I got a salad from there on the way home.

* I am now at home, after a hard day spent watching HIPAA videos, signing my name and writing my birthdate on numerous documents, and saying “Hello” to everyone. “Are you here to help?” someone asked me. “No, hinder,” I said, and winked at her. (The smart-alecky part of me needs to stay home while the rest of me goes to work.)

* It is a full-time, temporary job. It may lead to something. It may not.

* There is a sign in the bathroom at work that says, “Please flush the toilet after each use. Thank you.”

I may xerox this sign, on company time, and bring home two copies to post in my own bathrooms. Thank you.

Wacky Boy: “I made something for you, Mom. For Mother’s Day. At school.”

me: “Don’t tell me what it is!”

Wacky Boy, who had no plans of telling me what it was: “I’m not tellin’ ya!”

me, dying to know, was it the macaroni frames I saw spread out on the tables today??: “But I’ll give you a hug to say thank you for thinking of me.”

Wacky Boy, thinking it over: “I didn’t think of you. But my teachers did!”

Did I mention that we sent the kids back to school? 1) Our demands were met 2) hostages were released 3) I start my new job tomorrow. Work? What??? Turns out, if you apply for a job, you might get it. Then you have to go there.

(It’s full-time, but temporary. Two weeks, two months, or who knows?)