Category Archives: When I said you were average I was being mean

The posters are five dollars each.

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The book fair is all over! It was a big success and now I’m really, really ready for a big glass of wine. Forget the glass, I may just take my friend Hannah‘s advice and stick a straw in the bottle. I only went through two brief periods where I hated children and the entire world, but each period was only about ten minutes long, so I feel like that is a win. I also only had to say “Gentle hands and polite words ONLY when we are at the book fair” twice. However, I answered numerous variations of the question regarding the price of posters approximately one million times, but that is only to be expected.

I’m TIRED. There was also a SC/PA meeting to chair, and karate class for the kids, and a whole lot of paperwork and money counting to do. Plus, there was the little issue of an unexpected Tech Club meeting. At 11:55 on Wednesday, the announcement came over the PA system, reminding Tech Club members of the lunch time meeting. The boys are both (nerdily) in Tech Club, but this meeting was brand new information to them. Since they are two of five children out of six hundred that go home for lunch, we were in a bit of a pickle. No lunch! But there was no way they could miss the meeting, which was all about setting up AV equipment and caring for the school’s laptops. This was a very important meeting. PANIC AT THE DISCO. I did what anyone would do; I sped home, packed two lunches, and sped back to the school. Note, I said TWO lunches. I went back to the book fair – which is closed at lunch – and tidied things up a little. I did not realize that I had forgotten my own lunch. I realized it around 4:15 when I felt like I was going to die of grumpiness. I can empathize with the toddler set, is what I’m saying.

The nice thing about doing this for six years is that I can really see how the children’s tastes have changed over the years. I see kids who are now in Grade Six choosing I Survived books and Dear Canada books, when it seems like just a moment ago that I was helping them choose easy readers about the World’s Cutest Animals. I have kids who tell me about what they bought at the last book fair, and about how they’ve saved up their allowance to buy the Minecraft Construction Handbook. I walk down the halls and kids wave at me to tell me that the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid is the best ever. Last year, a ten year old boy was dejected as he really, really wanted the Pokémon Essential Handbook but it wasn’t available, and when I procured one for him through the magic of online ordering, he literally jumped up and down with excitement. There are many critics of Scholastic, with their exclusive marketing and their books that fall apart with repeated readings, but to me, it is all outweighed by the fact that those two days of answering the posters are all five dollars each yielded $3000 for our library, home reading, and ELL programs. Sure, the books are frequently gender-specific and feature a lot of Barbie and Cars characters, but the kids are reading, and they’re excited about reading, and I’m satisfied with that.

I’m going to overlook the fact that I had to thwart a couple young shoplifters and other depressing findings. Focus on the good! Mark had a few extra quarters burning a hole in his pocket, and so he bought me a bookmark. It’s purple and it says “DIVA” on it in sparkly letters.

More exciting news around here – my new washer was just delivered, and it’s a thing of beauty. The only problem is that my husband wanted to hook it up himself, and who knows when he’ll be home tonight, and so the piles of laundry are not getting any smaller. It’s funny, I never realized how much time I spend doing the laundry until I spent a week not doing the laundry. I foresee a weekend of folding clothes.

The delivery was slated for any time between 12 and 6, which meant that the boys – for the first time ever – walked home by themselves. I was unreasonably anxious about it, given that they a) know the way home very well, b) would cross the busiest street with the school crossing guard, and c) my oldest child actually IS a school crossing guard, but you know. Mothers. It’s also about minus 20 with the windchill and my children have a very bad habit of stuffing their hats and mitts in their backpacks. I’m happy to report that not only did they make it home with all their winter gear actually on, but they also brought a friend with them. Hot chocolate and cookies for everyone!

Well. Since it’s several hours before my husband gets home to start The Great Laundry Caper, and the butternut squash soup for dinner is simmering on the stove, and the crusty bread is in the oven baking, I think I will pour myself a glass of wine and binge-watch a few episodes of The Good Wife. A nice end to a crazy week! Happy weekend, lovely readers. xoxo

 

Just call me Lynn Raisman.

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I’m not sure how you parents of children in highly competitive sports do it. This weekend was the Candy Cane Shiah at the boys’ karate dojo, and the boys each competed in a kata and a weapons division. The whole time I was a bundle of nerves and it was the Candy Cane Shiah, a very friendly and fun competiton. I felt like Aly Raisman’s mother, except all that dialogue was going on in my head and also, I didn’t really know the routines that they were doing. STICK IT STICK IT YEAHHHHHH. Mark got a bronze in kata and a silver in weapons in his division, and Jake got a silver in kata and a GOLD in weapons. This is what he looked like after winning:

So that was pretty fun. The entire day they walked around the house wearing their medals, like they medaled in an actual Olympic event. It was a constant jangle all day long.

This photo says everything about their personalities. Last night the boys were working on math sheets, practicing for unit tests on Tuesday. I looked over Mark’s word problems, which were all correct but just had the answers written down, no setting up of the problem, no work.

Me: Mark, you have to show your work. 801 is the correct answer, but how did you get it?

Mark: Um, I regrouped. In my head.

Jake was working on greater than/ less than problems, and the question specifically asked “How do you know?”. Jake wrote “Because I know math.” Partial credit?

The weekend before last we decorated our gingerbread house, and I feel like we’ve made gargantuan strides in this area. Part of this is the fact that I buy the pre-made house with the pre-mixed frosting and the pre-cut-out gingerbread characters, and before you say well, YEAH, you have to be an idiot not to make something decent out of that much pre-fabricated festivity, I invite you to see the house from 2011. But look at this year’s offerings! I am going to admit that this is the year that I have had the least involvement with the decoration, and it is also our best house ever. Possible correlation. I was too busy making the gingerbread Christmas tree to really fuss over the frosting lines on the roof, but it turns out my husband is remarkably competent in this area.

Those are my husband’s hands, not mine, wielding the frosting.

 

That is supposed to be me, in gingerbread woman-form. Aren’t I lovely?
See, the little tree was taking up all my efforts. And the red snowman…I don’t know. It wouldn’t be a gingerbread house in the Boyhouse if there wasn’t some kind of dead/ bloody/ blown up/ violent component.
Mark made a smiley face on the side of the house – the windows are the eyes. Jake put that blob of red frosting there, showing where the nuclear explosion was. I should maybe be concerned.

Nicolemania and Beatlemania

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This is where I spent the vast majority of my week:

Every year – twice a year – leading up to the book fair I feel deflated and exhausted and think this is IT. This is the LAST TIME I’m running the book fair. Then, after running the book fair, raising thousands of dollars for the school library, and feeling universal adulation and love from the student body, who call after me while I’m walking through the playground, like I’m Jennifer Lawrence and the students are the paparazzi, “Hey, it’s the book fair lady! Hiiiiii book fair lady! Hiiiii! I love my book about zombies/ Diary of a Wimpy Kid/ Pete the Cat/ Lego Friends.”, I feel like I can keep on keeping on. My friend’s son, who is in fifth grade, thanked me in a very formal and polite way for all my “time and efforts” to “make this book fair possible.”

So that’s nice. I feel good about that; much better than how I felt when I read over my emails last night. Remember the kazoos? The kazoo playing at the school’s 50th anniversary assembly? The kazoos are going to be played as part of a performance by my children of the song YELLOW SUBMARINE. I feel a great deal of despair about this for a number of reasons, one of which is I haaaaaaate that song with a passion. Also, kazoos. 

All this 50th anniversary festivity is – somehow? – connected with the advent of Beatlemania, which Mark’s teacher seems to be embracing with passion. He was assigned to write down five Beatles’ facts and five Beatles’ songs. I was trying to help him with these facts, keeping things empirical rather than subjective, but my husband was home, and the result was somewhat disastrous.

Me: They were known as the Mop Tops! Isn’t that funny? Their hair was considered to be crazy back then!

Mr: Paul sucks.

Me: That’s not appropriate.

Mr: Paul DOES suck. He still writes songs like he did fifty years ago. They suck.

Me: I liked him in Wings.

Mark: What’s Wings?

Me: Another band. Let’s keep going. The band broke up in 1970.

Mark: Why did they break up?

Mr: Because of a chick! She was nuts though.

Me: SERIOUSLY. Let’s keep on topic.

Mark: Who was the chick? Was she pretty?

Me: The WOMAN was Yoko Ono. She was John’s girlfriend. I guess she didn’t really like the other Beatles.

Mark: Some girls do NOT like their crushes to hang out with their friends.

Mr: Exactly.

Mark: *writing* They also went to India a lot.

Mr: They went to India and did a lot of drugs and went crazy.

Mark: I don’t think I should write that. *writes They went to India and got groovy.*

Me: *sigh* How about some songs? I like Golden Slumbers.

Mark: I’ll tell you one thing, I HATE Yellow Submarine.

Me and Mr: Good boy.

http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add.php?iid=100655
Image from thecomicstrips.com

  
My friend sent me this comic strip and YES. Although, we all know how I feel about Tom Petty. Or do you? My darling friend Stephanie tagged me on Facebook to play that game where you tell random things about yourself. She gave me the number 8, so I have eight things to tell you about! It seemed too long for a status update, and so I have crafted it seamlessly into a blog post. Also it’s Friday, I’ve been at the book fair all week, and although I haven’t cracked open the wine yet – it’s only 11:30 in the morning – I feel like I happily COULD. It’s been that kind of week. Without further ado, here is my list.

Eight Random Things About Nicole

1) I really, really can’t stand Tom Petty’s music. Do you see what I did there? I didn’t say “I hate Tom Petty” because my dad always said “You don’t HATE anybody” to which I would respond “How about Hitler, Dad? Can’t I hate Hitler? Dad? Hitler? I hate him! So I CAN hate somebody.” Yes, I was a delight of a child. Anyway, I don’t like to be super negative about a person – a celebrity is still a person, I say from my glowing book-fair-lady-celebrity – and so I will say I DO NOT ENJOY HIS MUSIC. For all I know, Tom Petty is the world’s nicest guy.

2) I do enjoy a wide variety of music. Eclectic, if you will. I love motown and fat caped glittery Elvis, I love disco and 1970’s ballads, I love hippie music from the 70s, I love catchy 80s tunes and “alternative” 80s music, which makes me nostalgic for my youth, I love old-skool rap from the 90s and hip-hop and reggae (I don’t like reggae. I love it.) I have an incredible memory for lyrics which makes me think that I could probably do a lot more with my life, if the space in my brain which knows the words to every song ever recorded was devoted to something, you know, useful.

3) I wear the colour black all the time. I almost always have something black on. This habit dates back to my youth, which I probably shouldn’t admit to.

4) Sometimes – not often, thankfully – I find myself having conversations that go like the SNL carpool sketch with Alec Baldwin and Kristin Wiig, which is my favourite sketch ever, but less fun in real life.

5) I always, without exception, choke up when singing the following songs: Landslide, Foolish Games, and How Great Thou Art.

6) I often put on my jammies by 7:00 pm on weekdays. This means that during the week my husband frequently sees me in one of two outfits: a) sweaty yoga clothes first thing in the morning, and b) plaid jammies with a picture of Snoopy on them. This is marriage, kids. As my young friend Emily says when she sees a particularly unflattering outfit, “Those are married lady pants.” I’M SURE HE FINDS ME EXTREMELY SEXY IN MY MARRIED LADY PANTS THAT HAVE SNOOPY ON THEM, EMILY.

7) Despite this, with the exception of 5 am yoga, I never leave the house without makeup on and my hair done. NEVER. I walk the dog with lipstick on, I fancy myself up to go to the Co-Op. I’m totally going to be one of those scary old ladies with bright orange hair, lipstick bleeding into my lip lines, clouds of Chanel No. 5, and super fancy matching earrings/ necklace/ bracelet sets, who get all gussied up to go down to the residents’ lounge to play canasta. Note: need to learn to play canasta sometime in the next forty years.

8) When I was in Grade 11, I was Amanda Wingfield in the school production of  The Glass Menagerie. I rocked out a Southern accent like nobody’s business. I feel that I was born in the wrong place. I think I would have made an excellent Southern lady. I secretly LOVE when people refer to me as “Ma’am”.

So now it’s your turn! Instead of tagging people on Facebook, I’m going to tag bloggers to tell random numbers of things about themselves. Who wants to start? I’ll give you…six!

Reasons I’m Losing My Mind, or How Did Lee Garner Jr Make You Hold His Balls?

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There have been, strangely enough, tornado warnings around here.  Tornadoes!  Where AM I?  In any case, yesterday the rain held off all day until the moment I had to leave to pick the kids up from school.  I stood in the playground, in a torrential downpour, while I waited for them.  The rain tapered off and the sun came out five minutes after we arrived at home.  I cannot help but feel somewhat slighted by Mother Nature.

Ah, June in Calgary.  The sky is pitch black and the house is completely dark in the middle of the day; this in spite of the fact that the sky is bright when I get up at 4:45, and the sky is bright long past my bedtime.  The local meterologists swear that the average June temperature is 20 degrees Celcius, but to my mind of thinking, the meteorologists are either in possession of some very flawed data or they do not know how to calculate an average.  There is no way the average temperature can be 20 degrees Celcius, I demand you show me your data source.  These are actual thoughts that go through my head every time I see a weather forecast.  It is possible I have lost my mind.

This derangement is also apparent with regards to my feelings about my neighbour across the street, who has in recent weeks set out a collection of garden gnomes beside his front door.  I am tempted, every time I look out the window, to run across the street and steal one, and then take pictures of it in various locales and costumes, leaving photographs in his mailbox.  I think about this all the time.  It’s not a passing thought, I seriously consider what kind of clothes I could dress the gnome in, how I could take him to Menchies’ and photograph him with a fro-yo with gummy bear toppings, how I could strap him into the front seat of my minivan and take him for a ride. 

What is wrong with me?  I also find myself giggling uncontrollably when I think about Mad Men and the scene with poor pirate-y Ken, talking about Chevy, and the pain-in-the-assedness of clients in general.  “A client once cupped my wife’s breasts,” says Jim, helpfully, immediately followed by Roger’s earnest statement, “Lee Garner Junior made me hold his balls.”  WHAT.  Wouldn’t you love the backstory on that one?  It’s just so random.  The conversation is so casual, yeah, this guy sexually harrassed my wife, oh, and this guy made me hold his balls.  How does that happen?  What sequence of events have to occur before a guy holds another guy’s testicles, and how does that come up in casual conversation, like it’s totally nothing?

Maybe it’s the end of school looming near that has me collapsing in near-hysterics about everything.  I don’t know how else to explain it, but this article about embracing the furry au naturel look rather than waxing has me laughing until I cry.  Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the furry au naturel look, although for me personally I would be more likely to don a knee length, sleeved, 1910-era “bathing costume” than my regular swimwear while brazenly displaying a lack of a bikini wax.  What can I say, I like my esthetician. However, this has nothing to do with – as a young man quoted in an article suggests – heightened expectations due to pornography viewing.  Women of the world, take note: if a man has an expectation on how you should look in the nude based on what he’s seen in pornographic films, then probably he is not a man you should consider sleeping with.  It’s all fun and games until he wants you to pretend he’s the pizza delivery guy.  I mean, that might be fun and all, but if his entire outlook about the female body is based on porn, then he’s probably watching too much porn.  

But why am I laughing until I cry, as I mentioned before?  It’s because of this quote, and honestly, TRUTH SISTA and fist raised in the air:

“I think most guys are so delighted that they’re about to get laid they wouldn’t notice if you had a full-on Zach Galifianakis-style beard down there.”   

Something about the term “full-on Zach Galifianakis-style beard” makes me think of the dog-beard trend, but with Zach Galifianakis in a Michael Douglas-esque, um, situation.



My best attempt at dog-bearding.  Even Barkley thinks I’m lame.
 
 

Feeling the love

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It seems we all have very strong opinions on skinny jeans!  I do feel that we should have learned lessons from the eighties.  I will say this, my very worst hair decision ever – and this is even worse than my 1985 mullet that my mom had home permed – was to cut my hair like Madonna’s in her Papa Don’t Preach video.  And not when she’s dancing in her sassy little black outfit, I mean when she’s wearing her “Italians Do It Better” t-shirt.  Check out the video and you will understand why I will never again cut my hair short.  That very bad haircut took forever to grow out. 

Today I feel extremely self-satisfied.  Between the hours of 7:00 and 11:15 this morning I accomplished the following: showered, dressed, makeup and hair, baked two batches of blueberry muffins, made breakfast for the kids, cleaned the kitchen, cleaned the bathroom, walked the kids to school, walked home, walked the dog, baked brownies, and finished a task I have been working on for months – editing, uploading, and ordering photos.  I have not done this task in over a year.  I had Jake’s seventh AND sixth birthday photos to develop.  Good grief.  Now I only have to go pick up the developed prints and put them all into photo albums!  Perhaps if I didn’t put this task off for months and months I wouldn’t find myself going blind, editing and cropping 500 photos. To keep myself from going insane, I put youtube videos on to listen to while I cropped and cropped and cropped.  I somehow stumbled on this video and was reminded again why I watched The Fighter – I was sure hoping to see a lot more shirtless Mark Wahlberg than there was in that movie.  It’s such a good vibration!  Swweeeeeeet sensation!  I have probably watched this ten times already; there goes my productivity.  HE’S LIFTING WEIGHTS AND PUNCHING BAGS.  ONE OF THOSE WEIGHTS IS MADE OUT OF CINDERBLOCKS.  HE HAS NO SHIRT ON.  GRACIOUS.

I had to stop writing and watch that video again.  At this rate I will never finish this post.

Here’s a picture for my lovely blog friend Ciara, who would listen to him read the phone book (does anyone still use phone books?) in his Boston accent:



I KNOW, RIGHT?  If you ain’t in it to win it, then get the hell out.


Goodness, I am so distracted now, I almost forgot what this post is all about!  I’m supposed to be thanking Kerrie over at Family, Food, and Travel for the Liebster Award, and Rhiannon over at Happy Little Feet for the Versatile Blogger Award!  Thanks girls!  As part of accepting the award, I am supposed to give you seven or eleven facts about myself – but I’ll take the average and give you nine.  It’s a little daunting – don’t you all know everything about me by now?  I guess you didn’t know that I once had one of the very least flattering hairstyles ever and that I also have a thing for Mark Wahlberg.  So there are two facts, let me think of seven more:

1. Giving up cheese has made me so very sad.  But it also has pretty much made my premenstrual symptoms disappear.  I hardly ever want to mur-diddly-urder anyone during that special time of the month.  So, call it a break even?

2. I still kind of want to mur-diddly-urder people who misuse statistics or fail to understand that correlation and causation are not the same thing.

3. I am a huge nerd.  

4. The year my little brother was born I read A Little Princess over and over again, and wondered what it would be like to live a) in an attic in London, and b) in a gigantic palace-like place in India.  That summer I also read The Bobbsey Twins Visit The Farm many, many times and pretended that our backyard was a farm. 

5. I don’t ever want to live on a farm. 

6. I was an extremely anxious child, and I bit my nails until I was 24 years old.  Now I’m obsessed with having all my nails groomed to the same length.

7. Since giving up cheese, my standard lunch now consists of a tomato and pickle sandwich.  The humanity!

Thanks for the awards, Kerrie and Rhiannon!  Feeling the love!  It’s such a sweeeeeeet sensation!

First you tell me that your dog ran away, then you tell me that it took three days

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I’m happy to tell you all that I made it out of the Regina airport!  I know you were wondering.  Well, I had a fantastic visit with my grandma – I’m so glad I went – and I also saw my beloved aunts and cousins as well.  It was, all in all, a perfect visit! 

I didn’t even cry or get lost.  Well, truth to be told, I almost cried a couple of times, but I didn’t, so I consider that a win.  The two hour drive from the airport to my grandma’s house started out quite promisingly, with the exception that I had forgotten to bring anything to listen to and so I had my choice of two music stations and AM talk radio.  In the four hour round trip, I heard Dirty Deeds by AC/DC no fewer than three times, and Dancing in the Dark, Living on a Prayer, and Love Bites twice each. 

I did become a little unnerved after the sun set, driving in the pitch black, along a very bumpy highway on which several skunks had apparently JUST been run over.  I started worrying that I too would hit a skunk and would have to arrive at my grandmas with a stink bomb of a car.  This did not come to pass, fortunately, although at one point in the dark drive I thought it was raining and put on my windshield wipers only to discover that what I thought were raindrops were actually bugs.  Bugs.  Smeared all over my windshield.  While driving in the dark on a two lane highway with semis whooshing by me in the other lane.  I was a little stiff from all the white knuckling, but the trip back to the airport, in the daylight, was much more pleasant.  I could appreciate the big dome-like sky opening up all around me, with the seemingly endless prairie stretching out in all directions, studded with hay bales and pump jacks, the dust from the combines rising like a fog. 

The only other issue I had was when I was back in Regina.  I drove to the airport, then drove past it in order to find a gas station to fill up the rental car.  I drove, and drove, and no gas stations could be found.  I started to get nervous that I would drive too far and not be able to make it back to the airport – I’ve gotten lost under similar circumstances – and so I decided to turn around and head back.  I thought that just paying the ridiculous fee for the rental company to fill the tank would be better than me circling the streets of Regina forever, missing my flight.  But then when I turned, I saw a sign for a Husky station!  Score!  I drove up there, and then stopped, puzzled.  Maybe there was no gas?  Maybe it was just a convenience store and they’d forgotten to take down the sign?

But no, there was a tiny gas pump, hidden by the car getting gas.  Double score!  I perkily went into the convenience store to prepay – as the sign suggested – and the attendant suggested I just go ahead and fill up, and pay later.  Now – and here comes the embarrassing part – recalling that I am a person who does not know how to flip the hood on the vehicle that I have been driving for almost nine years, and that I am a person whose coping mechanism when something goes wrong with the car, even if “going wrong” means “need more washer fluid”, is to burst into tears, I sat in the car for a solid five minutes unable to figure out how to open the gas cap.  Finally, the attendant, probably thinking that I am a complete moron, came out to help.  It turned out that I just needed to press the gas cap to open it.  Oops!  I went to go fuel up but the pump was not automatic.  I stood at the car for what felt like an eternity, but was probably only a couple of minutes, trying to figure out WHY the gas wasn’t going into the car.  The attendant spoke to me over the loudspeaker but I couldn’t understand what was said.  Finally the woman who was filling her car came over to me and said “Listen sweetheart, you need to push down this lever, like this” then proceeded to carefully watch me fill the tank, possibly concerned I would start spraying gasoline everywhere then light a cigarette, a la Zoolander.  When I finished and thanked her for her help, she made sure I knew how to close the gas cap – which I DO – and then very slowly and clearly gave me very specific directions on how to get back to the airport.  Thanks, strange lady!  Tears averted!

I should add at this point that I’m really good at math and I can lift heavy things all by myself, so I’m not a total feminist failure.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful, my flight somehow missing a violent electrical storm that had shut down the airport for a short period, of which I was blissfully unaware, although my husband was waiting for me in a state of extreme stress.  I also discovered that I grossly overestimate my own importance, since I came home to two happy children, a clean house, and BEDS THAT HAD BEEN MADE, INCLUDING PILLOW SHAMS ON PILLOWS, AND DECORATIVE PILLOWS ON THE BED.  My word, that was almost as good as an unloaded dishwasher. 

I’m not dumb but I can’t understand how he lifts me in the air just by raising his hand

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It has CONTINUED to be summer around here, which is leading me to wonder where I am and to also SEIZE THE DAY, so there has been lots of swimming and outdoor activity around the Boyhouse.  There has also been lots of discussions about Star Wars. 

My kids talk about Star Wars all the time.  In the mornings, they play Star Wars Wii, and then the rest of the day, no matter what we are doing, they talk about Star Wars Wii.  They talk about the Star Wars movies and the Clone Wars and they spew out facts to me in a very intense way.  Jake spent his allowance on books about the Clone Wars and now they quiz me about bounty hunters and padawans and other things that I cannot remember because I have no more room in my brain.  Children, my brain is already filled with every song lyric ever written, I cannot make room for Star Wars.  Also I appear to have a mental block about it, to their frustration.  Mom, that’s Count DOOKU.  He’s bad.  No, that guy is a Jedi!  Jedis are GOOD.

They like to watch YouTube videos about Star Wars and then act them out while watching them, which is both cute – especially when Jake is Anakin turning into Darth Vader, the intensity with which he does this – and also a bit alarming.  I mean, isn’t there a whole subculture involving live action role playing?  I sure hope my kids don’t turn out like these guys.  But, I guess if they did, I wouldn’t have to worry about becoming a grandma prematurely, if you know what I mean.  Silver linings everywhere, people.

On Thursday we were stuck at home, waiting for the shower door people to install our shower doors.  Have you noticed I haven’t been talking about our renovations for a while?  That’s because they completely stalled two weeks ago.  The contractor kept teasing me with shower door installation dates.  I cancelled dinner guests, I waited at home, I cleared my schedule, only to find out that the doors were not yet ready, and they would be installed another day.  I kept looking at the bathroom, so close to being finished and yet so far.  But on Thursday, they were certainly going to be installed, I was assured.  And so while we were waiting I dressed the children’s stuffies in their own clothing – hilarity ensued – and watched fan videos of Weird Al’s Yoda on YouTube. 

Sometimes I look at my daily activities and feel a deep sense of whatever the opposite of accomplishment is.  As an aside, this video is deemed to be the best version, by both me and the boys. 

The shower door installation people did show up, but I sensed something was wrong when I heard a lot of arguing in a language I did not understand, plus a number of panicked sounding phone calls.  Any time I walked past the bathroom, the installers would fall completely silent and stare at me.  It was quite unnerving.  Finally one of them handed me his cell phone, and the man on the other end explained that the shower doors were cut incorrectly and so they would be reinstalled next week.

Sigh.  The Dark Side is looking pretty good right now.