Kids had no TV all day yesterday. They rode bikes instead, played, helped clean the house (??? amazing…) and didn’t scream for television at all. And best of all, no tantrums when I tried to turn the TV off. (A bonus of never turning it on in the first place.)

Hockey God and I watched Valley Girl but THAT WAS IT I SWEAR TO YOU INTERNET. It was even more tripindicular then the first eight times I’ve watched it. (I cheat and it’s with Valley Girl? Something I’ve already viewed over and over? What’s it with me and this movie? “…they’ve got a word/for girls like me…” Totally. Fer shure.) Martha Coolidge’s commentary on the DVD is hilarious — Nicolas Cage was fretting about the shooting schedule for Rumblefish, there was a conflict, she told him, “I know Coppola, it’s okay. I’ll call him.” He gives her a funny look. She calls the production company and they give her a hard time, “We don’t have a Nicolas Cage on the film — just Nicolas Coppola.” Hee hee.

Day Four: No TV should be easy today. (Once we make it past the withdrawal pangs from no morning cartoons things go pretty smoothly.) But can I avoid Earth Girls are Easy? Who woulda thought Geena Davis would go from that to Thelma and Louise to… Commander in Chief? Dammit, I would rather see her play Thelma on the show than the character she plays, who Must. Not. Crack. A Smile. How cool would this be? She shows up in the Oval Office, all dusty, wearing her black T-shirt, and says, “If nobody loses their head, nobody loses their head.”

Happy Labor Day, everyone! Hope you’re off work today.

(9/5 — Edited to say: We watched no TV yesterday at all. Nada. None of us. Call Guinness Book of World Records, would you?)

Day 2 of No Idiot Box: Going well. Wacky Boy had one major freak-out over no Saturday a.m. cartoons, but I distracted him by teaching him to burn CDs. We went out for breakfast and the kids were angels. Life, she is sweet. Huevos rancheros and fresh fruit for me, Greek omelet for Hockey God, ginormous pancakes for the kids with a pound of butter and a half-cup of syrup apiece. Hot cocoa for them because we were worried the syrup wasn’t giving them all the sugar they needed. Coffee for the grown-ups… hot damn. It was good.

Wacky Grandma is bringing over her favorite movie, The Apple Dumpling Gang, to watch with the kids so that kills making this an entire day of no TV.

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“If you came and you found a strange man… teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you’d kick him right out of the house, but here you are; you come in and the TV is on, and you don’t think twice about it.”

-Jerome Singer

We do watch too much television here, it’s the truth. Yeah, but I do think twice about it, and that’s why all my kids watch on TV is PBS Kids and some movies that are not “Scary Movie 3,” Chucky or “Snakes on a MFin’ Plane.” (They love “Herbie Fully Loaded,” all the Muppets movies, “Cheaper by the Dozen” 1 but not 2, you know. Stuff like that.

Now comes Wacky Girl with a plan: No TV for the month of September.

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End of August means hello, rain! I haven’t missed you much the last two months. Guess we’ll be hanging out again ’til end of June 2007. Nice to know you, summer. See ya later. For my Thursday Thirteen I bring you…

THIRTEEN MONTHS OF RAIN IN OREGON

1. August sprinkles = Do I bring laundry in off line? Yes? No? No = It keeps raining. Yes = the sun comes out.

2. September drizzle = Yes, bring laundry in permanently. And patio chair cushions too. And the kids’ easel. And the camp chairs I forgot were out there.

3. October spitting rain = You’re at the Oregon coast. Sorry, no one told you the rain stings here? Welcome!

4. November downpour = raincoats, boots, cotton pants that get soaked. Jeans that get soaked. Dog who gets soaked and stands there looking miserable. Cats who laugh at dog and make him feel more insecure then he already is.

5. December rain = Dang it, when will it stop raining? Basement is flooding again, even though I thought that hole was patched. Are the gutters full? We just cleaned them out. Why can it never snow here for Christmas? Kids: “Mommy, will Santa be able to fly in the rain? I thought his sled needed snow?” Me: “Santa’s fine. Go back to bed.”

6. January sideways rain = This is why no one here carries an umbrella. The rain blows in sideways, so what is the point? I love my Columbia parka.

7. More January rain = I need to re-waterproof my Columbia parka cuz it is soaked through.

8. And still more January rain + cold temps = the Wackies, ice skating in their driveway. (We did, for real. I have the videotape to prove it. It was so cool. But when Hockey God skated off down the street, and around the block? That, my friends, was the coolest. That was the second or third day of being stuck inside. By day six, nothing was fun anymore. Not even Trike Races in the Kitchen.)

9. Big downpour rain in February = Remember that week of nice weather earlier in the month, and you said smarmily, “See? We sometimes have a nice spring in Portland. It doesn’t always rain.” You were fooled again by our girl Mother Nature.

10. Gusty winds and rain in March = Why did I wear this white T-shirt that is now see-through (peekaboo!) and forget my rain jacket? Why does it always rain here? Why does it always rain all week during spring break? Want. To. Cry. Now.

11. April showers = May flowers. Flowers! Pretty. Nice. Sunshine, yes?

12. May flowers need more rain, apparently. May comes in like a lion and goes… oh, wait. That’s March.

13. June rain = Rose Festival! It’s a festival… with rides! Three parades (Starlight/Kiddie/Grand)! And sailors! Sailors impregnating local girls! We’re all hap-hap-happy. So no rain, right? Just sunshine and dreamy summer nights, right? Ha. See you in July, summer!

I love stories. I especially love family stories and stories from my kids. Do you have a good love story? Yours or your parents? Post it if you’d like. Funny stories from or about kids are welcome, too, as always. It’s our 8th wedding anniversary next week and I’m feeling all sappy. (Yes, Wacky Girl was born two days before our first wedding anniversary. How sweet is that? The girl came out of the womb ready to party.)

“I’ll tell you a story every day when you pick me up,” Wacky Boy promised me last week when I arrived daily to get the kids after theater camp.

Most of my friends in college liked “tall tales,” too. That’s why we worked at the student newspaper. You can make up all kinds of stuff in newspaper work and credit it to someone else. (Kidding! Journalists would never do that!)

“You guys are all good at telling stories,” one of the copy editors told me. He was a little mournful about it. He kept trying to write like Kerouac or Carver and it wasn’t working for him. “I can’t tell stories for shit. And C,” (one of the reporters) “he’ll tell ya stories ’til ya puke.” Yep, that’s what I’ve tried to live up to ever since. I keep trying to get the various family members to write down their stories for me. Stories about my husband, when he was little; stories about my twin aunties, who as little girls lived in North Dakota but played in Canada; stories about love. Oh, love. It’s enough to make ya puke.

I want the story of how my mom and dad met — at Yaw’s Drive-In, “home of the Top-Notch Burger,” she went to Madison High School, he went to Grant, in the other neighborhood, it was a scene — I want it written down in her own words. She keeps promising she’ll write it… someday…

And the story about the time Hockey God was dancing with a hippie chick and… Sorry, I can’t tell you that one. But it is my kids’ favorite story about their dad and gets them laughing their little bootys off. Here’s one from Wacky Girl from a couple of years ago — she was 3 1/2 or 4 at the time. I do this a lot with my kids — they dictate, I type. We print it out, then they color pictures to go with it. I still have the first book my mom and I “wrote” together. “A is for acrobat,” “W is for wooly yak.”

My grandma said she’ll let me videotape her, telling the kids stories. She won’t write them down, but I can.

MY STORY
by Wacky Girl

I love you friend, Brady Bunch, friend, be howdy! Love can’t come true. No, love can come true! We be our matey-howdy! Love me true. Be my shadow. Cow loves you! True!

Love,

WG

Me again — so pretty good, eh? Cuz I wasn’t so sure love could come true, but then I confirmed it with my three-year-old and hell, yes! Love can come true! (Emphasis hers and hers alone.) So I’m thinking she should bag the grade-school career and go straight to writing Hallmark cards. Or spam.

Keep writing.

Yours,

WM

The Wacky Dog, he gets depressed. Anxious. Tense. Prone to chewing fences and throwing cats around the room. Thus, his prescription for amitriptyline which I just had refilled.

The label reads:

* Do not stop taking medicine without calling doctor
* May make you sleepy; use caution driving
* Skin may be more prone to sunburn; use sunscreen
* Do not drink alcohol while taking this medication

Woof! All better now…

I got this one from FamilyFun.com. We all love cornbread, but only one of us loves meat. Excuse me, two of us love meat, if you count chicken nuggets.

So I created my own variation. I would have added Boca Burgers but we ran out. The kids refused to touch it, but Hockey God and I gobbled it up. You could grate cheddar cheese over the vegetables, then spoon on the cornbread batter, but the way I made it was almost vegan. You can make it completely vegan by adding a little extra oil and omitting the egg in the cornbread batter, and using soymilk instead of cow’s milk. I used taco seasoning instead of mixing up the spice mix because I was in a hurry.

Bon Appetit!

WM

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“Why can’t a dish break a hammer?
Why, oh why, oh why?
‘Cause a hammer’s got a hard head/
Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye.”

— “Why, Oh Why?” Woody Guthrie (Songs to Grow on For Mother and Child)

Q: Didn’t summer just start?
A: Yes, and now it’s over. Deal.

Wacky Mommy’s Q & A with herself:

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On Aug. 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was declared in effect.

“I had a friend down the hill, in the long shadow of our building, whose mother cooked us meatloaf. When I discovered meatloaf, and that other mothers regularly cooked it for their children, I went home and said, ‘Other mothers cook. Why don’t you cook?’

Without hesitation Mom said, ‘Other mothers don’t write books.'”

— from Sean Wilsey’s “Oh The Glory of It All”