Organic

If you eat organic spinach and get e. coli, you can at least take comfort in knowing that it's organic e. coli. It's got to be better for you, right?

Another Odd Exchange

Yesterday we went to my in-laws for dinner. A school bus threatened to halt all traffic, so we sped up a little (you know you do it!), just missing the flashing red lights of horror.

Travis: "Look at all those high-schoolers waiting to catch the bus. They look like they're thirty."

Me: "That's because they are thirty and they're meeting their small children at the bus stop. School's over."

Travis: "Oh." And then, "please don't put this in your blog."

It was too good to pass up, Travis.

I'm Dreaming Of A Green Spring

The dark days of December are upon us, and it's right about now that I start thinking fondly of gardening. This is strange: I don't actually like gardening. It's difficult for me to consistently care for growing things (my poor kids!). A plant coming out of the ground in the same spot I put a seed in the ground startles me -- I think it's a weed and have to stop myself from pulling it out. But I'm planning a huge overhaul of my front yard. Here's my plan:

*Plant a hedge of blueberries bordering the street.
*Expand my alpine strawberry patch one more row.
*Remove the Japanese maple and replace it with a fig tree. YUM.
*Add one more vegetable plot.
*Raze the useless, ornamental fruit trees at the side of the house (yeah, out of four trees, I found one crabapple this summer. And who really wants crabapples?) and plant 3 dwarf apple trees (one late August producer, one late September producer, and one late October producer. The October apple keeps all winter and even improves in flavor, apparently.) and a butternut tree.
*Build a patch exclusively used for winter gardening.

So there's my list of all the things I'm not actually going to do, but will dream about doing all winter long.

Sea Creatures

Verdicts from the two-year old:

Mama is a fish
Daddy is a sea anemone
She is an octupus
Baby brother is a shark

Goals for the Week

1. Clean my room.
2. Work all day, every day cleaning up so my house can look like a burglar swept through it rather than a hurricane.
3. Don't yell back at my tantrum-prone two year old.
4. Um, that covers it.

Unrelated and Extraneous

1. Even when desperate for chocolate, I still won't touch the unopened bag of M&Ms sitting in my closet. I HATE M&Ms. Except I don't hate peanut butter M&Ms, which is a good reason not bring bags of them into the house.


2. I went shopping on Black Friday. To Goodwill. Yep, I took advantage of the $.99 blue tag sale and 40% off everything else. Needless to say, the parking lot wasn't quite as packed as the mall's.

3. Homemade macaroni & cheese tastes so much better than turkey and candied sweet potatoes (when did people start adding sugar to an already deliciously sweet root?). Thank you, Mom, for not being bound by unfortunate-tasting tradition.

The Thanksgiving Post

I am thankful that:

1. I am fully recovered from my C-section.
2. I'm able to write again (that boy had better be intelligent since he was apparently eating my brain in utero.).
3. There are good books to read and I can read them.
4. No one is kicking me in the stomach anymore.
5. I have lungs again.
6. My husband is willing to support his family.
7. My husband has a great job.
8. My husband has recently taken on the dishes as his chore.
9. My husband is eccentric.
10. My daughter is energetic.
11. My daughter is delightfully clever.
12. My daughter loves her baby brother, even though he takes attention away from her.
13. My son doesn't scream all day.
14. My son loves to sleep.
15. My son's food doesn't cost us over $300/month.
16. My mom helps me out whenever I need help (and even when I don't).
17. My mother-in-law stays with the baby two nights a week so my husband and I can both get uninterrupted sleep.
18. I have a large stash of Diet Coke in the basement for all the other nights.