little of this and that

Since I can’t rustle up the motivation for a big post, here are several mini-postlets:

• I find it hard to believe that M has only been out of school for about a month.  This month has felt really, really looooong.   I have also discovered that my children devour activities like candy.    We are doing our best to keep busy: we made strawberry jam, went swimming at my parents’ house, went to the park, baked cookies, made a million playdates, rode bikes and scooters, visited a children’s museum, visited a historic ship, went to the zoo, and taught M to cook a simple dinner.  Mostly, we are not bored and we are always trying to scrounge up new things to do.  I am going to be so exhausted by the time school starts, I might nap until Christmas.

• L and M are both sprouting up like weeds this summer.  M is beginning to lose her little girl look.  She is all gangly and knobby.  Sometimes she looks at me and I can see her future teenage face.  L isn’t huge, but she is getting bigger too.   We are in the last days of her toddlerdom and I can fast see a preschooler (albeit a somewhat short one) emerging as the last shreds of her babyness melt away.

• Our second hand-me-down washing machine and third free dryer conveniently gave up the ghost practically simultaneously.    That is when I discovered that there is WAY too much information about washing machines out there and the features they offer are just too much.  Do people really need to pay an extra $600 for a STEAM function?  For fifty years, we have been washing our clothes without it and I never once thought “Huh, if only I could steam clean my clothes, life would be better.”   I finally chose my W/D from a scratch and dent store and walked away annoyed I had to spend so much money to wash our clothes, which are probably not even worth what we paid for those machines.

• My mom randomly mentioned she wanted to buy a gun a few weeks ago.  I am hugely anti-gun, so this created a bit of tension as I envisioned having to stop using her house for free babysitting.  Upon further questioning, it turns out my mom has convinced herself that SOMETHING BAD is going to happen to the power grid and all rules of civilization will evaporate over night.  She doesn’t even want the gun to protect herself, she is afraid that she may need it to hunt for food.   The crazy of this scenario is just ridiculous.  I pointed out that our entire city lost power for a week last year without mayhem.  People just grilled their melting freezer meat and spent a lot of time hanging out in their yards with neighbors.  Besides, if we ever get to the point of starvation where I would need to hunt, I would just head on up to Canada.  There is Socialism up there, dontcha know, and I bet our Canadian brothers and sisters wouldn’t let us starve.  Even if there were no gas stations (the HORROR!), I figure I could walk there in less than a month, eh?  Usually, this kind of crazy comes from the inlaws, but it seems that even in my own family a little crazy can be found.

That is about all I can think of right now.  Onward and upward!