The Lowdown...

I thought I needed a new title besides "Random thoughts"...

I'm still walking a fair bit and I can feel my muscles getting stronger. I still need to go buy better socks and I need to find my good walking shoes - which is funny because our house isn't all that big nor is it all that messy (it's somewhere between "tidy" and "about to be on 'Hoarders'" - where on that spectrum it resides varies from day to day and week to week but I've never had a major insect infestation nor have I ever moved a 3-foot pile of newspapers only to find an old, dried up cat skeleton.)

My new job? It's up in the air... Gotta love soft money. So.... maybe I will have to clean out the storage room after all. Anybody need a writer/researcher with kick-ass spreadsheet skills who will not only get her work done but make you laugh so hard coffee comes out your nose at least twice a week (month? year? decade?)? Call me.

The garden looks like heck 'n' gone. It's that time of year. I'm almost looking forward to the first frost (assuming I get the basil and peppers harvested beforehand).

You know how dogs like to roll in stinky things and they make that sound of delight? Poppy rolled on one of the kids this morning. Bathtime.

I started listening to Radiohead this week. I can't decide if I love them or if they're a bunch of hipster bummers. I've always liked "Creep" a lot, though.

I watched Betty White on Inside the Actor's Studio last night. If being 88 can be like that, bring it on!

Shoebuckle's relented and now admits that she is, indeed, only 6 months old and a teeny tiny baby. Phew! I've been struggling with the whole "My youngest kid is in 2nd grade" thing. It probably makes me an exceptionally bad parent to a 6 month old seeing as how I dropped her off at the corner and watched her walk to school. I don't think I ever did that sort of thing to her when she actually was 6 months old (I'm pretty sure I didn't... those are some fuzzy years, though!).

PS: The 2nd grade teacher emailed me on Monday and asked me if there was some confusion about homework since she has only received one completed homework packet out of 4 and it was turned in 3 weeks late. Note to self: never trust a kid named Shoebuckle.

R has been making weapons out of sharpened sticks and fragments of litter on the school playground lately. I have a feeling this could end badly. He wishes Tracy's S was here because "he seems like the kind of kid who could make a pretty cool battle axe"

Looks like, between the two of them, elementary school parent-teacher conferences might be more interesting than usual this year!

Middle school conferences consisted of long lines to have short conversations with teachers who looked at me like "she doesn't have any F's or weapons violations*... what the heck are you doing here?" Lesson learned. (*also noted, weapons violations get the attention of the middle school administration... get R past his stick-sharpening phase in the next year or so)

What do you think it would be like to parent this kid right about now? I wonder about those kinds of things. My guess? Pretty exciting and pretty difficult.