Back when the internet was brand new, and I could only access it while I was visiting Hubby at his university in Chicago, I was surfing Yahoo, which I had NEVER seen before, and was black text on a gray background. I found Archive X, which was a collection of user submitted ghost stories. Some of them are awful and poorly written. Some of them creep the crap out of me. I can’t believe it’s still around. And still somewhat creepy. 

1. What do you think someone might put in a ziploc bag decorated with marijuana leaves? I can’t imagine anything appropriate to put in there, can you?

2. With a continued woot-off, will I get anything done? NOOOOOO.

3. Why is it that Freebird is suddenly obsessed with clasps and buckles? I called Rbelle last night and said, “Do you ever have to wait to get your kids out of the car?” She was like, “Uh, NO.” Me? I’d been standing in the driveway for 15 minutes while Freebird tried to figure out the top buckle on his carseat straps. Normally I’d be all “I’m the Mom and it’s Mom’s Law round here!” but he was so happy and so fascinated (and I was kind of amused by his complete fixation on the buckle) that I hung out with him and wondered if I could set up carside service for his dinner so I didn’t have to go anywhere once I pulled in the driveway.

3.a Why is it that Hubby thinks of good things to do that I totally blank on. Freebird’s obsession with buckles vs. his intense dislike of laying down on the changing table? Aha! Give him the strap - conveniently equipped with a BUCKLE at the end - to play with. Very happy Bird who gets clean pants and fresh clothes with no fuss. Man, Hubby is a genius.

4. How long until I Photoshop a picture of Freebird with a buckle and the caption, “I HAS A BUKKLE! NOOOO THEY BE STEALIN’ MAH BUKKLE!”

Freebird is still happy and eager to wake up at 3am and start COUNTING TO TEN AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS OMG. This has yielded two very tired parents who wake up and have no choice but to listen. He’s not crying or anything. Just counting. Over and over. Until he goes back to sleep.

I think we need earplugs that exclusively filter out the counting. I bet Sesame Street makes them. Right? RIGHT?! 

This is the link that caused Hubby to go into convulsions. He laughed so hard he had to sit down. TWICE. TWO SEPARATE TIMES he fell over giggling at the thought of this chair taking up residence in our home.

Man, it’s almost tempting to get it and see if the top of Hubby’s head comes off when he laughs at the real live version.

Last night I got the urge to make a dish I hadn’t cooked in at least a year - spicy peanut soba noodles with chicken. YUM.

This morning I got up, and despite low blood pressure had the urge to cook some more, and made oven-puffed pancake with sliced fruit for breakfast. Again, yum.

I’m not sure what’s going on, but my urge to cook is in high gear like damn. 

Last night Hubby and I had an outstanding dinner, reminding us both that (a) we need to take advantage of Parents’ Night Out at our daycare more often and (b) really good food is so much fun to eat and talk about. The place we ate last night was just incredible, and we loved it. All these little touches - silverware we’d never seen before, tiny salt dishes with tiny spoons, and an amuse-bouche of cucumber-wrapped seared tuna with wasabi crème fraîche. While we love fine dining, it’s not something we can make a habit of. Next time we might go for the local Ethiopian place, or something much more lower scale. But gosh dinner was good.

And then this morning, we met with the architect with preliminary designs for our home - we both agreed easily which one we liked better, so next up our nice architect dude is going to draw up a three-dimensional computer model of what we want to show us how the whole thing will actually look. He also did designs for a second addition to add a master bath and closet suite to our existing bedroom, but we don’t think that we can swing doing both at the same time. The kitchen alone will be a big kahuna of a project.

All this fine dining and house renovation is making me seriously think that we need to win the lottery or something. Maybe a dumptruck of money will park itself in my driveway. That’d be awesome. 

Yesterday Freebird came home from daycare wearing a change of clothing (note to self : time to send daycare a pair of shorts for summer change of clothes!) because one of the teachers was cleaning the lunchroom and hadn’t rinsed the chair yet, and another teacher put young Mr. Bird in the chair. His blue shortalls? Stained with bleach on the tush so now it is a funky shade of orange.

I’m not upset - accidents happen, which is why we send him to school in clothes that aren’t extremely expensive or hand-wash only. Most of his clothes come from outlet malls - though they are nice items of clothing - and we fully expect them to get dirty and grubby. I’m thinking I might take diluted bleach and a paint brush and try to turn the bum stain into a cloud and then “draw” with bleach on the hem to make a “design” of sorts. The shortalls are cute and if I can change them into something somewhat funky instead of obviously stained, I will.

But then, when I get invited to a party selling children’s clothing for $40-60 an outfit, I feel badly because there’s no way I would spend that on an outfit for Freebird unless I knew he could wear it multiple times - and frankly the events to which he’d wear a nice outfit are few and far between. Even if the outfits are really really precious and so soft and comfortable, and really, so creative and obviously made by talented people, I always figure that’s the day when there will be a mishap with a bit of cleaning solution, and oops, bye bye outfit. And even if it’s not cleaning solution, it’ll be ketchup, dirt, marker, mud, something - maybe washable, maybe not. 

So I stay put as a cheap mommy who buys nice things at outlets, knowing that someday, I’ll have to buy a suit for a bar mitzvah or something, and that’ll be plenty to spend!