Diet Coke Saves the Day… Again.

This week John has had to make up for being on vacation last week and so has been working long days. Long days as in he has not seen Clara other than at 2:00AM all week. Long days like Ivy has been watching for him to come home starting in the morning because she misses him. Long days as in I am having trouble remember to miss him instead of wanting to kick him in the shins (shins because I wouldn’t actually want to damage him because then I’d still be taking care of the house and girls by myself!) when he gets home because he’s been gone so long. And today, well today is Friday, Day Five, Day I Hope Your Dad Is Ready To Watch You All Weekend Because, “I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!”

Here is a conversation between Ivy and I this morning.

Me:” Ivy please don’t put your feet on me while I’m changing a poopy diaper.”

Ivy puts feet back on me.

Me: “Ivy get your feet off me.”

Ivy takes feet off and says: “Be QUIET!”

Me:…. (gladly shutting up it’d been one of those mornings, and I was currently winning this battle)

Ivy “Mom don’t talk any more.”

Me:….

Ivy “Mom I said be quiet”

Me:…

Ivy: “Be QUIET”

Me….

Ivy “Mom don’t talk to me!”

Me…

Ivy: “MOM DON”T TALK TO ME!”

Me: “OK! I won’t talk to you.” (even though it has become very obvious that more attention is what she is looking for not less)

Ivy puts feet back on me.

Then I grabbed another Diet Coke becuase in the words of my friend Sarah:

“Diet Coke helps me not want to strangle my kids.”

So we have arrived at nap (‘NO MOM, NOT NAP REST!!!”) time with two live children, and multiple dead Diet Cokes. It’s not a perfect solution, I’m running low on Diet Coke and I’ve had a few more bathroom breaks than normal today but it aught to get us all through ’till Saturday!

Note: Diet Coke consumed today has been out of regular cans. This cutie next to my little desk gargoyle is, well,  cute, and good for pictures, not for maintaining sanity!

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

Sometimes I debate with myself if anyone else would like the books I read.  Was it good? Was it bad? Was there enough good stuff to make it worth it? This time I didn’t have that problem.

I won’t even bore you with the details.

Would I recommend it? No

And what’s with the new trend in not capitalizing anything on the cover of books? I hate that.

Truck by Michael Perry

I can’t decide if it’s odd that I enjoyed a book named Truck or if it makes perfect sense. When he goes and fixes up his old truck throughout the book and starts talking technical he loses me sometime after “impact wrench” and “headlights” and before “diamond plate” and “carburetor bowl”. But then there is the whole loving an old rusty pickup truck thing and since this lives at my house. I could relate.

The book also includes such essentials as fried chicken, spirea, gardening,  deer hunting,  and of course a girl.

Would I recommend it? Yes. I didn’t love all the parts but it was funny and so very Wisconsin I couldn’t help but like the whole.

Giant Marshmallows

Many weeks ago I bought a bag of giant pink and white marshmallows.They were huge, Ivy would love them because they were pink, I would love them because it was a marshmallow but bigger, it was going to be great. I saved them and saved them and finally we roasted them, they looked awesome.  It was so exciting!Then Ivy bit into hers.And in the words of Ivy it was “Not very good.”

After we got over the disappointment (the white ones were not any better) we threw our half eaten marshmallows in the fire. Ivy tried to throw her own pink glob in and it turned into a classic can’t get the sticky thing off my hands problem.  For my Mom and I watching her move it from one hand to the next while slowly getting covered in pink sticky goo almost made up for the disgustingness of the flavor.

Fortunately, never one to be short on sweet treats I had a spare bag of normal marshmallows on hand. Next time you are in the store, skip the giant pink marshmallows and go for the regular ones. Unless you would like the amusement of watching your kid turn into a giant sticky pink mess. Then I recommend having a lake nearby for the cleanup!

Techies We Are Not

Our big vacation last week was at our family’s cabin near Tomahawk.  We went up prepared for a week of outdoor fun and immediately got rained on for two days.  Then Tyler showed up, with all his fancy computery sort of equipment. Of course in my family having fancy computery sort of equipment means that he brought a laptop with movies on it that could access the internet.

We are not hard to impress.

The first night he was there he pulls out his laptop and we think about watching a movie, pretty soon we are all grouped around him on the couch like a bunch of crazy monkeys. It was kind of pathetic, until this happened.

Yup, that’s my family hanging out in the garage watching a movie in their rain jackets.

Points of interest:

-The huddled together look is from a combination of having not much room between the boats and the fact that nobody could hear the laptop speakers over the rain.

-Just over their heads you can see Johns gigantic grill/smoker he got for Christmas, dinner was cooking and I think that’s why everything got set up in the garage. There is a very nice “shack” with crazy things like couches, coffee tables for your beer cans, and windows to quite the noise of the storm, but clearly that’s missing half the fun…

-John grilled/smoked us dinner everyday it was delicious! I’m having trouble adjusting to regular life, regular food, and being the regular cook!

Thankfully the sun came out the next day after Tyler went home and we went back to our normal movie-less existence.

Apparently a major hazard of having no TV’s in the family is that you’ll put up with all sorts of indignities just to watch a movie and cook dinner at the same time.

A Name of Her Own by Jane Kirkpatrick

This was a historical fiction about a Native American woman traveling west with a company of men  a la Lewis and Clark.   I find reading about this time period and the whole Lewis and Clark, can we get there from here? travels  pretty fascinating to read about, add to this a pregnant female main character with a half breed translator husband who drinks and beats her, then bring two very  young boys along on the trip and the fascination level goes even higher. Unfortunately most of it was of the can’t look away from a car crash type.

Would I recommend it? I can’t decide. On one hand I liked the setting, and main character, on the other I wasn’t a big fan of the general flow of the book. Everyone is speaking different languages and few are speaking their native tongues and so much of the conversation is choppy. I’d say this makes it  accurate but not enjoyable to read.

Talking Smart

Today was the Pewaukee Triathlon John, my Uncle Jim and my brother Tyler got together to do it as a team. John took the swimming leg, fitting as an ex-swimmer. Tyler took the running leg,  not so fitting, but he does run, although I can now say that after 5K he does not look happy about running. Uncle Jim did the bike, very fitting since a few years ago my Uncle took up biking and while we have teased him unmercifully all the while he logs in an amazing amount of miles! Uncle Jim came all the way from Michigan to join the team (named “Not a Prayer” by my Mother who signed them up, let that be a lesson for next time you cook up an idea at Christmas dinner and don’t act on it first!) and they placed a very respectable 35th in the team division. As Gramps would say “They beat somebody!”

Now I just need to go back a pull up this little comment by my Uncle after a post about the Pewaukee River Run back in April…. Here it is… “Looks like an old fat guy from Michigan is going to have to come over there and put them in their place.” and.. Oh look! A tweet that reads “Don’t make me come over there!”  You can check out River Run for the full story. But in short, my friend and I have been attempting to beat my Mom and her friend in a canoe race for several years and haven’t managed it yet.  Talking smart is as far as we’ve gotten, something Uncle Jim excels at as well.

I’m sure you can guess what happened today but here is my race synopsis anyway…

Luck of the draw the boys and my Mom ended up starting in the same heat. John (blue cap) and Mom(red cap) lined up together on the beach for the swim. John sped out in front of the heat with another ex-swimmer leaving the rest of the heat behind Mom included. But soon we saw John bounce face first off a buoy, a LARGE orange buoy and then careen off in the other direction. Result being that he seemed to swim at least half again as far as necessary. The trouble with being an ex-swimmer is we are all used to those cushy things like lines on the bottom of the pool and lane lines. He exited the water in style… …well,in style might not be the word for it, he realized after than he was the only person he saw there wearing an “old school Speedo”. To my husbands defense, he was a swimmer, they all wore Speedo’s. Anyways, my husband ran out of the water in his Speedo, and handed off to Uncle Jim (OK, so we actually never really call him Uncle Jim it’s Uncle Weasel or Uncle Mushroom, Ivy called him Weasel all day so lets go with that one) and Uncle Weasel took off on his bike… …as it turns out the team didn’t rate too high on the style meter no mater who you were watching!

Mom swam a very straight course, got far enough out of the main pack that she was swimming mostly by herself, ran in to the transition area, and took off her on bike. Lets also just say that my mom bikes on her red Schwinn Traveler that she got in college. I don’t know much anything about bikes but it seems that most triathletes (or Uncle Weasel) have things like clip in pedals, or baskets, or bikes that are super light weight,  not so much with the old Schwinn…

Waiting at the transition area we didn’t see much of the biking but reports from the road say that Mom caught Uncle Weasel around five miles, gave him an encouraging “Root hog or die!” and left him in her dust.  Mom ran into the transition area with her bike and left again with a smile (sort of) for her fans. Uncle Weasel does not run, not even in a race, but he moved as quick as he could over to Tyler who took off on the run five minutes behind his Mom. Even with the Weasel’s lack of running factored in we are still all scratching our heads as to why it took the two guys longer in transition than my Mom. I’m thinking it has something to do with Tyler never making it out of the locker room at swim practice in a reasonable time but I could be wrong.

The cheering section (plus John and the Weasel) all moved over to the finish line to see if Tyler, the-25-year-old-stays-in-shape-lifts-weights-runs-on-a-regular-basis-son, could eat up the time and catch his mom. Turns out no. Mom showed up just two minutes before Tyler did, still smiling, sort of. Tyler said only two people got by on the run both old ladies, and then amended “Not as old as you!” looking at his Mom.

My Mom won her age class in the Pewaukee Triathlon today, she was almost twenty minutes ahead of the next woman in her age class, and two minutes ahead of the smart talking Uncle Jim and his relay. That’s right, three of them doing the legs separately couldn’t manage to beat her. So let me just say, she’s fast and if you think you can beat her, go ahead a try. Oh and let me just throw in there that she sorta freakishly competitive so if you’d like a fighting chance you better not mention that you are gunning for her!

My Uncle Jim, did awesome for a self proclaimed “Old fat guy” doing the bike course in 15 minutes less than his predicted time, coming in just over the one hour mark! Maybe one day Uncle Jim will  beat his little sister but he’ll have to join the rest of us and stick to talking smart for the time being!

P.S. If you wake up really early and run a race, eat a huge brunch, then climb and trim some trees,  go ahead and take a nap on the couch…

…just be prepared for company!