Sunday, July 28, 2013

Mischievous Mondays: A Mischievous Moment Gone WRONG


Help! Somebody get Prince Charming to rescue me! It stinks in here!!

I’m so excited to be co-hosting the Mischievous Mondays blog hop! It doesn’t take a lot of effort to prove my girls are mischievous. You might remember my post about Olivia stealing brown sugar from last week. 


Here’s a mischievous moment that repeats itself over and over around here: Rosemary writes the script for a prank in her mind before she actually pulls the prank.  She plans to stuff her daddy’s shoes with princess figurines so that when he goes to put them on…Whoa, Nellie! Princess figurines in Daddy’s shoes so his feet won't fit. Absolutely hilarious. This is pranking awesomesauce. She can’t hold it in any longer. She tells Olivia. They are now prankster partners. They plot and plan for a good 7 minutes. There is giggling, whispering, secrets.


Then just a little more time passes and it gets quiet. Quiet is never a good thing.


Olivia goes straight to the shoes, alone and armed with princess figurines. She’s loading the shoes herself. She lugs the dirty Newbalance sneakers, now full of plastic Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, into the kitchen. They land with a thud on the floor,  right at her daddy’s feet. “Try on your shoes, Daaaaaaaddy,” she says with a singsong voice, an evil grin on her face.


She turns, walks back to her sister, and smirks, “I gave Daddy the shoes, Sissy. He’s putting them on right now!” A moment of pure, unadulterated wickedness.


Rosemary cries big, fat tears. She does the ugly cry. Her plan is foiled. “Olivia ruins EVERYTHING!” she wails. She cries for 20 good minutes while I say "I know" a lot. Olivia is still jumping around, satisfied. I send her away just so Rosemary doesn't have to look at her.


Finally, I give up and put them in the bath. By now, everything just feels…dirty. Baths wash away the most mischievous of moments.

By tomorrow, it will all be down the drain, and they'll be plotting together again. 

For more mischievous moments from other moms, check out some of the links below! Then check back later, because there will be even more links.
Mischievous Monday Blog Hop
 

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Classified Ads

For sale:


Tiny house with one postage stamp-sized bathroom. 

Pantry not included. Dining room not included. House has a door to the back yard inside the closet in the master bedroom, which is convenient if you want to take guests through your entire house, including your bedroom and closet, so they can get to the back yard. 


So, if you have guests, don’t plan on hiding any of your mess in your bedroom or your closet, either. Basically, you should just plan to either keep things mess-free or plan on being embarrassed repeatedly.

Home lacks pool and hot tub. No sauna.


Would gladly leave lots of junk (read: “treasure”) inside for new owner to possess as his/her own upon closing.


House contains lots of happy memories. Someone else owns the cows that come up to the fence in the back yard, which means they're maintenance-free pets. 

All child and pet vomit has been previously removed by owner…multiple times.


Purchase price is negotiable, but should be enough to cover the home described in the wanted ad below.

Trash pick-up is on Wednesdays. Those guys will wave at you if you look out the window each week at 8am.
 



Wanted:

Bigger house.
  

Home should have a pantry the size of a grocery store. Or, really, just a normal size. Whatever.


Should also have miles of granite counter tops in the kitchen, and must have a dining room. And what you’re thinking is wrong. You’re about to say, “But we never eat in our dining room, anyway. You don’t want one of those. Nobody eats in their dining room.” Oh, yes. Yes, I do want one. If it means more space, I want it. I am tired of having to move junk off the tiny table that doubles as our counter/cooking preparation area and onto the washer every time I want to sit down and have a cup of coffee.


Non-negotiable requirement:  another bathroom, and even better yet—an additional 2 or 3. This way, every single time I have to pee, there might not automatically be somebody banging on the door and whining, “But I had to peeeeeeeeee, Mommy! Why do you always go when I have to gooooooooo?” All bathrooms must have working locks on the doors.


While I’m at it, I’d also like a kid-free room I can call my study, with books on built-in bookshelves all the way to the ceiling, a leather chair, and a fireplace. There should be a location for stashing Cheez-its, chocolate, and wine.


Also desired: double sinks; a whirlpool tub; crown molding in every room. Loads of bedrooms for kids and guests.


Could I also have a gardener for all lawn maintenance? 


Would like an outdoor fireplace and pool house. Oh, and a pool and a hot tub would be great. Breakfast nook should overlook the pool, fountains, and gardens.


I would love to set up the house with bells, so the servants downstairs could come up when I want them, then disappear back downstairs when they’re dismissed. Oh, and have I mentioned that I will be needing servants? They can live in the crawl space for free.


Or, better yet, I’d like to introduce self-cleaning elements to my home. I mean, this is 2013. I want my home to have up-to-date self-cleaning technology.


I want a playroom in its own wing of the house. That room will be soundproofed and should be completely self-cleaning.


I’d also like self-cleaning floors, and the appliances could just keep us fed and clean. 


So, basically, I want to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast before the servants turned into real people. How much does an enchanted castle run these days?  

If your home meets all these requirements, please let me know immediately. Feel free to contact me in the comments area below.

photo credit: Images_of_Money via photopin cc 
photo credit: spablab via photopin cc

Friday, July 19, 2013

Sugared Up



The Costco bag of brown sugar was gaping open, and it was empty almost all the way to the bottom.

Every time I see that bag when I’m looking through the cabinet for a jar of tomato sauce, popcorn, beans, I always think, “I need to buy one of those ‘brown sugar bears’ so every bag of brown sugar won’t transform into huge rocks.” Somebody asks for cinnamon toast for breakfast, and I cringe. I don’t want to scrape sugar off the top of the mass that is now our Costco bag of sugar. I’m obligated to do it until I use up this bag, but I don’t want to do it.  
This is part of the reason I thought it was odd that the bag was open.  Nobody ever touches that bag of rock-hard sugar but me.

The other reason is because my husband typically buys his own little bag of brown sugar when he feels a need to add it to barbecue sauce. (Does your husband do that, too? Purchase special ingredients every time when he cooks, whether you have the stuff at home or not? Because he “can’t remember” if we have any, but what comes home for special cooking projects always seems to be name brand and not on sale?)

Anyway, I was cooking, so I grabbed a can of black beans, closed up the industrial-sized bag of brown sugar, and moved on.

I finished what I was doing, and 30 minutes later, I was sitting in the living room on my couch. I was just settling into vegetation mode when I heard a rattling in the kitchen…cabinets knocking, the crinkling of plastic. The crinkling went on for awhile.

“Olivia? Rosemary? Who’s in there?” I half expected to have to chase the dog away from the trash can again. I never noticed anybody go into the kitchen...

Finally, Olivia came out and stood in the doorway, her mouth full—FULL—of huge chunks of brown sugar. “Hi, Mommy,” she croaked, her cheeks full of the stuff. She still had some in her hand. And somehow, even with her cheeks full, she was grinning.

The grin on her face…that grin

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “You look like you just stole cookies from the cookie jar.” That’s the look she had. It’s the face that means, “I just got a whole handful of brown sugar, and it’s in my belly now, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” It’s the face that says, “I've totally been playing you on the brown sugar, Mama. And if you turn your head, I’m totally doing it again in 5 minutes.” 

Let me just say, when I figured out what she was doing, I wasn’t sweet. Pun intended. I will save you from the details of yet another exasperated mama moment...er...I mean...parenting opportunity.

But I assure you--I moved the sugar.

One day, that kid is going to be a Mama herself. And I predict that she's going to have her own secret stash of brown sugar and a spoon, and that she will pull it out when nobody is looking, probably in the same way I pull out my stash of chocolate in those desperate moments.

And her kid is going to find her stash. Because this future grandma may or may not show the kid where it is and how to grab a great big handful.

Do you have a little sneak at your house, too?