Well, now that the Space Station repairs have finally been made and everyone at NASA has been briefed, I can take a break from my part-time job as an astronaut and get back to the really important things in life, such as the old blog here.
Oh, wait. I’m not an astronaut. My fear of flying kept me out of the space program. Well, that and the fact that you’d never catch me in one of those big white suits. There’s no way to look slim in one of those things. And seriously, how in the world would I ever drink my diet coke with that helmet and visor thing in the way?
Any-ol-hoo. It’s been quite a while since I’ve wandered around on the blog. One minute I was hanging out on the sofa, mindlessly snacking away on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and sipping diet coke by the gallon, and the next minute I found myself back in the — oh, I can barely bring myself to say it — working world.
That’s right. I’m back in the classroom. Teaching 5th grade, of all things. Wait, it gets better. I teach Language Arts to my homeroom, but then we switch for everything else. Guess what I’m teaching to three classes?
Go ahead. Take a shot.
Science.
It’s still a shock to me, too. I’m working for my former principal who has known me for a sweet forever, and when she called and offered me this job I actually said, “Are you sure you want me to teach Science? I mean, you do remember who you’re talking to, right?” Strangely enough, she still wanted me to take the job.
So far we’ve been in school for four weeks. When I decided to accept the position, I looked at Tater Daddy and said, “How hard can it be? Millions of women work and have families. I really feel like I’m ready to go back to work.”
Silly, silly Tater Mama. How I overestimated my ability to adapt to life without sleep.
Tater Tot goes to school with me and is in the 3-year-old preschool class, which he is enjoying very much. Last week he informed me that he held Carly’s hand and that he would like to go back to school again. Love may be in the air.
Don’t worry one bit about Small Fry, as he is in very capable hands. Or should I say paws. Pearl was just delighted to step up and take over as the nanny. Oh, okay. I’m kidding. She’s simply assisting with the child care, but we like to let her think she’s in charge.
All in all, I’d have to say that our lives are in a constant state of chaos. The house hasn’t been clean in a month. I’m never caught up on laundry. I couldn’t tell you the last time I slept more than six hours straight, which would be a luxury. My classroom is a wreck at the end of every day, and I’m never ahead on lesson plans. We’re supposed to have grades entered into the computer every week by Tuesday, and I have yet to get them all in there. Granted, the program is new to me and I haven’t been trained on it, but still… I am NOT used to being this behind. As Erma Bombeck once wrote, “I’m so far behind I think I’m first.” (I loves me some Erma.)
I’m learning that it’s normal to feel this way when you take on a little more than you bargained for.
I’m also learning not to start sentences with, “How hard can it be?”
Because if you ask a stupid question…
Things at the Tater house have gone into overdrive, and one of these days I’ll find the time to tell you all about it. In the meantime, here are some totally random things just for you.
1. The pictures from Tater Tot’s birthday party are stuck on a camera for which I can’t find the cord. My big camera eats batteries like Tater Daddy eats PopTarts, so I took our smaller camera to the party. As soon as I find the cord that allows me to download pictures, I’ll post some. I am sure you are on the edge of your seats with anticipation.
2. No pictures of this haircut are coming anywhere near the blog, but thanks for the curiosity. So far, in the seven days since the unfortunate chopping, my hair hasn’t looked the same two days in a row. When it has just been dried but not treated with insane amounts of heat, I look a lot like Donny Osmond from the 70s when he was just a little bit rock-n-roll. After I put the heat to it (hot roller and the flatiron) Friday, I had a look much like Florence Henderson’s/Carol Brady’s flip/shag, which was most definitely a mistake. But my haircut doesn’t have as much distance between the shag and the flip. That’s a plus. Sunday I put big hot rollers in it all over and then brushed it out so it had loose curls in the back. Nice and pouffy. It was like high school all over again, without the madras plaid skirts and twist-a-bead necklaces. Who knows what tomorrow will bring for my hair? Every day is a hairdo adventure.
3. Have y’all tried the peach milkshake at Chick-fil-A? If not, make haste to the nearest location and order yourself a giant one. You will not regret it one bit. It is milkshake perfection all the way around.
The end.
See you later, alligators!
Tool Time!
My brother drove home from Knoxville for Tater Tot’s birthday party last Saturday. As if driving across the state (and Tennessee is a L-O-N-G state, in case you haven’t noticed) weren’t enough to show his complete devotion to his older nephew, he brought two gifts with him.
First is the firetruck you see on the floor. It has flashing lights and sirens, plus a ladder and doors that really open. Apparently, that’s very cool from a 3-year-old’s point of view. Tater Tot has two other firetrucks, but they’ve been cast aside for the one his uncle gave him.
The next gift is what you see in the picture: the Home Depot power tools set, complete with safety goggles. The hat is leftover from the Bob the Builder show we went to, but it does complete the look, does it not? Can you imagine how much help he’s going to be to his Daddy now that he has his own power tools?
To say that Tater Tot loves these tools is like saying Boo Mama thinks cheese is “just okay.” Understatement. Of. The. Year. His joy knows no bounds.
In fact, last night he was carrying the tools around in his tool bag, and he said, “I wuv my toowels. They are PERFECT for me!” Later, when he got himself all decked out in his goggles and plastic hardhat, he grabbed one of his saws declared, “I’m weddy for action!”
Yes, he is. Every minute of the day.
I just got finished reading 70 blog posts. That’s right. Seventy. That’s how many I’ve missed since Saturday, when I couldn’t have read a street sign, much less a blog post, for getting ready for Tater Tot’s party. It’s also the day our internet connection dropped dead.
Our internet people finally came Tuesday. I explained that Tater Daddy had already crawled around under the house and marked the place on the cable where the problem was. He just couldn’t fix it himself. Charles, the internet man, wandered around the backyard for a few minutes, came back in and said that the problem wasn’t back there. I repeated the whole thing about the cables running under the house and even showed him the hole in the floor. Then I pointed to a spot on the floor and said, “My husband said to tell you that you’ll find the problem spot right about here.” Charles went back outside, stood there for a minute or two, and returned to tell me that the whole cable was damaged and that he’d have to put in an order for someone to come out at a later time to run a new one.
Charles is no fool. He didn’t want to crawl around under the house.
Tater Daddy came home and he was…er…kind of put out. After supper, he went to Lowe’s, bought what we needed and tried again. It took the better part of the night and two trips under the house, but we are now connected to the outside world again.
According to my husband, though, Charles is an idiot.
In other news, we’ve been without a dishwasher since I mentioned it to you a couple of weeks ago, but I finally picked on out yesterday. It is supposed to be delivered and installed before 8:30 this morning. While I’ll be happy to have my new dishwasher, with its Jetclean II and ToughScrub powers, it should be illegal for deliveries to be made at 7:15, don’t you think?
I’ll be back in a day or so because I do have other stuff to blog about.
By the way, “I really loved the last haircut. I think I might like to go even a little shorter this time,” does not translate smoothly into hairdresser-speak. I know this because I spoke those very words yesterday when I got my hair cut. I left the salon not with a shorter version of the very cute and sassy hairdo I got four weeks ago, but with a short haircut resembling one Princess Di once sported. In the 80s.
I still love they guy who cuts my hair, and I should have been more clear about keeping the same general style and less enthusiastic and “going shorter!” Fortunately, my hair grows like a Chia Pet.
I have to go water my head now.
I’m playing along today in Kelly’s “Show Us Your Life” carnival. I love it when someone else thinks up something for me to do, especially when I have a bazillion other things to do. Tater Tot’s birthday is Sunday, and his party (we just do a family thing for now) is tomorrow. He will be three years old. THREE! He was a baby, and then I blinked twice and now he’s three. Whew!
Back to the carnival. Today’s theme is to show your wedding dress. Tater Daddy and I got married in October 1994. When my mother and I went shopping for my dress, I was determined to find one with a super long train and absolutely no bows. Naturally, I chose one with a sweep train and a huge bow on my rear end, not to mention the bow that attached to my veil.
The skirt was plain with a beaded bodice, as was the look in the day. Here I am with my Daddy. It’s one of my favorite pictures of us.
Here’s the happy couple coming out the front doors of the church after all of the pictures had finally been taken. And look! Tater Daddy didn’t have any gray hair! I guess fifteen years of being married to me put the gray right in him! Haha!
So there you go. Head on over to Kelly’s Korner and check out what other people were wearing the day they got hitched. Feel free to play along. Let me know if you do and I’ll be sure to head back over and check it out.
I’m off to pick up some last-minute things for Tater Tot’s party. He’s really into Lightning McQueen and the Cars characters. Kachow! Kachow!
Tater Tot was bumping into Zeus on purpose. Zeus is 14 and, though pretty healthy for his age, kind of feeble. The following exchange took place.
ME: Stop bumping into Zeus. He’s old.
TATER TOT: (yelling) No! YOU’RE old!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s 5:00 and I have to go. I want to beat the crowd at Luby’s.
It appears that I’ve channeled my inner 7th-grade spirit and have decided to write about what I did on my vacation in which I went absolutely nowhere. It was fabulous.
Believe it or not, I only napped once, and it was interrupted by a phone call after about 40 minutes. Let’s face it. Napping falls into the category of Things I’d Like to Do Again when a toddler and a newborn are in da house. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I watched a fair amount of TV, mostly whatever Tater Daddy was watching. Oh, my! There is a whole other world of television outside of Diego and Caillou. Have y’all seen any of The History Channel’s The Revolution? I’m normally snoring by the second word when it comes to these shows, but this is a GREAT series. I’ve also become hooked on Drop Dead Diva, and I hope I can remember to watch it or at least record it. When Army Wives came on the air, I was all over it. Then for some reason I forgot to watch one episode, and that was it. Big Brother started last week. Some seasons I’m interested, others not so much. This season seems to promise several train wrecks (Chima is one all unto herself), so I just can’t turn away. I also want to see if I can catch Jesse with his shirt ON.
My mother’s garden is starting to come in, so Tater Tot, Small Fry and I met her about halfway between Memphis and her house one day last week. She loaded us up with tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplant. We nearly killed ourselves on BLTs and fried eggplant. Shut. Your. Mouth. It was divine. (She just called to say the corn is ready to be picked. I wept tears of joy.)
One night we made a homemade pizza. Exciting, I know. We’ve never made one, though, and it was pretty good. I wish the crust had been thinner and crispier, but for a first time effort, it wasn’t bad. Plus, it was fast. I was so proud bored that I took a picture of it.
I found the recipe at cooks.com. I’ve had a lot of luck using that site, but there may be some others out there. Do you know of an online recipe site that has great recipes? I’d love to know about it, because I am in a food RUT.
Our dishwasher died a couple of weeks ago, so I’ve been looking around for one to replace it. I got serious about it last week and have narrowed it down to two. Then, because the appliance gods apparently hate us, the microwave joined the dishwasher and “crossed over to the other side.” Nice. Have you looked at microwaves lately? Some of them promise to do everything from cook a roast to make your bed for you every morning. Those are nice perks, but I don’t want to pay $800 for a microwave. I’d like a simple microwave; one that will let me set the time to pop my popcorn and reheat leftover pizza; one that will tell me the time; and one that has a timer. Guess which company makes this model? Not a single one.
I watched movies with Tater Tot. We played with dumptrucks and tow-trucks, tractors and bulldozers. We pretended to be trains and bears and dinosaurs. We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches together, and we ate melting popsicles on the porch. We read books and played catch and sang songs. Sometimes, we were simply quite and still.
It’s good to step away for a little while every now and then.
I guess you could say I took a bloggy nap, and it did me a world of good.
How are YOU?
You wouldn’t think it would be that hard to find a pair of casual sandals; plain old brown go-with-everything sandals.
You, my friends, would be wrong. That is, if you live in the world of me.
The thing is, I don’t like the thong sandal. (Come to think of it, I don’t care for it in underwear-britches, but this post is about sandals.) Don’t get me wrong. I like the sandals themselves. I just don’t like to wear them.
I’ve never liked that little strip of leather or nylon or whatever in between my toes. It irritates me to no end. Always has. When I was little, around six or so, the big thing (in sandals) was to have a white or navy blue pair of them — with a thong. A single strip ran up your foot from the thong, met a strap that ran around the back of your foot and buckled at the ankle. I still remember the blisters between my toes, and the memory still makes me wince.
There’s one more reason I avoid thongs, and it’s very simple. I have the ugliest feet in the free world. I’m not kidding. They are U-G-L-Y. It’s one of the main reasons I don’t get pedicures. Subjecting an innocent person to my feet is just wrong. I worked with a guy at my first job who was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. We were having a discussion about feet one day — we were very serious about our jobs, what with both being fresh out of college and all — and, long story still long, I let him look at my feet. We became hysterical after making all kinds of jokes about my hideous feet, and then he summed it up. ”Oh, my word! You have Tasmanian Devil feet!” I’ve never actually seen a Tasmanian Devil, but if I ever meet one, I should apologize to its species for the insult.
For the longest time I agreed with my mother that no one has cute feet except babies and toddlers. But then I went off to college, and when I moved in with my friend, Diane, do you know what I discovered? Diane had beautiful feet. And she wore sandals that actually showed her toes. Amazing! Honestly, Diane should be making the big bucks as a foot model.
Any-ol-hoo, a couple of weeks ago, Tater Tot was at Parent’s Day Out and I had a whopping case of cabin fever, so Small Fry and I decided to wander about. I haven’t bought sandals in a while, so we went into DSW (Designer Shoe Warehouse). I thought surely they would have a variety of sandals, not only in color, but in style, what with their 5 million pairs of shoes.
Here’s what I’ve been wearing for the last three years or so. It’s what most of my sandals look like; no thong and a strap wide enough to cover the foot ugliness.
Just look how worn they are.
And, yes, that is some sort of stain on my sandal. No doubt it is Tater Tot related.
If you look closely you can see all the dog hair on the carpet. So much dog hair, so little time.
Anyway, I hauled Small Fry in his carrier up and down those aisles only to find thong after thong after thong, along with a couple of really ugly Gladiator-style sandals. (I think I’m going to write Big Mama and ask her opinion on those. What do you think? Will she agree with me and say they are all kinds of wrong, or will she say they are actually a fashion must, thereby proving to the world that I am, indeed, a fashion idiot?) What do you think about the Gladiator look?
I did find these, which are very comfy. They’re not quite what I had in mind, but I do love the way they feel. If you’ve ever worn anything Merrell, you know what I mean.
What in the world is a girl like me to do? It’s a thong-lover’s world, and looking for a cute sandal without one is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Sighhhhhhh.
One haystack down, so many more to go.
I’m poking my head back into the blog for one quick thing.
I just read this post from Missy’s blog.
Even if you don’t have children, it’s worth reading. It’s reminds us how quickly things can happen to any of us.
I’d love to tell you that I’m headed off for a week of rest and relaxation, but the odds of that happening don’t even exist.
I’m simply heading off for a week of not blogging. I’ll keep reading your blogs because I’m hooked and couldn’t keep away if I tried. What can I say? Your blogs are like Diet Coke to me. I’m hooked.
As for me, well, I’m running out of steam. Y’all know how I need my steam. So I’m going to take a week off. Unless, of course, something fabulous happens. In that case, I’ll be back immediately. I wouldn’t hold my breath for it, though, so y’all have a great week, and I’ll catch you next Monday.
Do you think there’s any way I can possibly sneak in a few naps now that there are two little Taters around here? You know how I lurves me some naps!
