Currently (July 2024 Edition)

Reading: nothing, BUT I finally read a book for the first time since April and finished it this week. 

Drinking: way too much Coke. Don’t talk to me. I’ll quit again on Monday. 

Cooking: dunno, but it will have rotisserie chicken in it. 

Watching: 

Sick of: generations insulting each other through social media.

Wearing: my summer uniform which is a t-shirt and knee-length biker shorts with pockets. 

Buying: Pizza Rolls. If we don’t have Pizza Rolls in the house, Daisy is not a happy camper. 

Terrified of: recipes that call for Dijon mustard. Sometimes they are amazing. Sometime they are horrible. Daisy and I have a favorite salad dressing recipe that has Dijon mustard in it. We’ve made it hundreds of times. But last week we made some, and it didn’t taste right. We thought we must’ve measured something wrong, so we dumped it out and started again. It still tasted wrong. I had just bought a new bottle of Dijon. Is it the brand? Did we screw it up twice? I just don’t know! And it tasted so bad that now we are afraid of it!

Annoyed by: my kids’ messes.

Laughing about: Nicky bringing home 65 A Quiet Place posters from the movie theater last night. 

Dreading: 4th of July.

Missing: KMart and ShopKo.

Craving: water and a nap.

Singing: “Counting Stars” due to this Facebook memory that popped up yesterday:

Thinking about: how to keep my kids busy for the next several days.

Dreaming: that I had to teach a PiYo class at the gym, and I couldn’t get my phone to connect to the Bluetooth speaker for music.

Looking at: my ceiling fan.

Playing: Clue. Since 2013, we’ve played Clue to celebrate Scotty and Chad’s birthdays. It’s Clue week.

Saying: “stop being annoying.” I say it to Scotty, and I say it to my kids.

Feeling: unmotivated, bored, and tired. 

Needing: a technology detox. It would be very wise for me to take a week off from my phone, social media, and TV. 

Frustrated by: a watery eye. My left eye has been watering like crazy this week.

Listening to: incessant talking from the mouths of my children. 

Excited about: the high school doing The Music Man this year, and Nicky and Daisy should both get to be in it. 

Eating: Sam’s Club pizza.

Regretting: Sam’s Club pizza.

Smelling: hairspray from Daisy’s recent grooming session in my bedroom.

Struggling with: everything I should be doing that’s good for me. 

Wanting: a clean and perfectly organized house.

Remembering: a bus ride to school when I was in kindergarten where everyone chanted “New Kids suck!” the whole way. 

(Meaning New Kids on the Block).

Procrastinating: calling the insurance company. 

Grateful for: socks.

Nighttime Chats with Eva

Last week Scotty and Nicky left for a few days to Young Men camp. While they were gone, Zoe got a fever, and as a result, Eva refused to sleep in her bedroom with the sickie, so she took Scotty’s place in my bed. I was bummed because I was looking forward to having the bed to myself and being able to throw all Scotty’s pillows on the floor, sprawl out, and watch my shows late into the night with reckless abandon. Once Eva moved in, I decided the best choice was to just go to sleep. I turned off the TV and tucked my blanket under my chin just the way I like. Then Eva started talking.

First she complained about the temperature of the room. It was too cold. I told her that’s the price you pay to sleep in my room. If you don’t want two fans blowing on you all night, don’t sleep with me!

Then she told me that we need to adopt an old bloodhound. She gave me all the reasons for this suggestion based on information she read in a book she picked from the Scholastic Book Fair.

That led to a conversation about all of our past pets, and she wanted to know if our cat, Colonel, was fat or average. 

I’d say average.

Since I wasn’t able to throw all of Scotty’s pillows on the floor, Eva snuggled up with them and said, “I really like dad’s body pillow, I’ll have time of my life sleeping with it!”

(And to think, I’ve paid for this child to go to Disneyland when all she really needed was a $15 pillow from Costco). 

Then she asked me if I knew that Paige in Bizaardvark is played by Olivia Rodrigo (yes, I did know that but only because she had asked me the same thing earlier in the week, and we’d already had this conversation). She then proceeded to tell me the entire plot of the most recent episode she had watched. 

She also told me how many cherries she ate for a snack that day, what’s on her Amazon wish list, and why she needs new Crocs. 

This was after she had chatted my ear off pretty much all day. My brain was fried. 

The next night, Zoe still had a fever and a cough, so we did it all over again. 

I never got to sprawl and watch TV, but I got to hear all the hot gossip about the neighbor boy. Apparently he calls his scooter a “bike,” and that’s wrong because it’s a scooter, not a bike. 

Eva the day she discovered the Vitruvian Man