Why my home will never be featured in "House Beautiful"

I am not a don't-eat-in-the-living-room kind of mom.

I mean, I do insist on eating meals as a family as much as possible and all that, but there is definitely much consumption of food in front of the TV going on around here.

This is why most of my upholstered furniture is hidden by blankets and/or slipcovers, none of it is expensive, and a lot of it is old.

(image from housebeautiful.com)

Last night I looked at the loveseat where Baby Girl likes to sit and realized I wasn't going to be able to put off washing the slipcover any longer.

The mess on the cushion looked like she had attacked and subdued something wild there. I'm wondering, How much fight can a cheese sandwich really put up here?

The cheese sandwich crime scene was on top of the yogurt smears and cupcake crumbs that were already gathering on the couch. So I sighed and pulled the slipcover off to wash.

Later in the evening when I put the cover back on I was pleased to see how nice and clean it looked. It's like having new furniture! Sort of.

Then, of course, Baby Girl woke up this morning with a nasty stomach virus.

It's so nice to have your furniture cleaned before it gets vomited on....

What Happened to November?

So some of you may be wondering how I did with NaNoWriMo last month.

And some of you may be wondering: What is a NaNoWriMo? And is it contagious?

(image from laughstub.com)

Well, November is National Novel Writing Month, and the challenge is to write a fifty-thousand word novel in thirty days. I didn’t exactly make the 50,000 word mark.

Would you like to know my final word count on the deadline, November 30th at midnight?

13,461.

I guess it’s over one-fourth of the way there….

I know, right? LAME.

There were several obstacles in my way. (And I’m not talking JUST about those five obstacles whom I birthed myself!)

For one thing, my plot just wasn’t going very far. Here’s a good way to describe it, as written by Chris Baty about his own novel:

“My NaNoWriMo novel this year was

not quite what I'd hoped.

The idea seemed great in October.

I pictured my story rocketing across November

like a cheetah, flying through the

fertile grasslands of my imagination

and leaping over everything in its path.

Instead, my book bumbled around

like a myopic sasquatch in an overgrown forest,

knocking into pine trees and spending

a fair amount of time wondering if

boiled moss could work as a coffee substitute.”

I feel your pain, Chris!

Also, there’s the problem of the death of naptime.

The Day That Naptime Died.

I think that sounds like a song.

Everybody sing! “Bye Bye! My alone time died! Since the twins escaped their cribs, on all my time they have dibs. And I spend half the day stuck in the car with my kids, since the day… that naptime… died.”

(Click here if you’re interested in reading more about the demise of naptime.)

Anyways, having the twins awake ALL DAY LONG has really thrown a monkey wrench into my writing career.

Is that the right expression? Or is it “a spanner in the works of my writing?”

Or perhaps it’s “a wad of dried Play-Doh clogging my keyboard so I CAN‘T EVEN TYPE?” (I think we’re getting warmer!)

In any case, my novel is going very slowly. But that’s okay!

In the immortal words of Dory, “Just keep swimming! Just keep swimming! Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming!”



Yes. I’ve been watching WAY too much kids’ TV…

(image from disney.wikia.com)

Whose Party IS This?

My husband took Boo and the twins to a birthday party for a three-year-old.

I didn’t go because ET also had a party she had to be taken to, and the three-year-old in question was the daughter of my husband’s friend.

He said they were going to have a bouncy house and a cotton candy machine, so it sounded like it would be pretty fun for the kids.

(image from freeextras.com)

When he came home, my husband asked me if I wanted to see the pictures and videos he’d taken. Of course I said yes, because I wanted to see how the kids had enjoyed all the fun things at the party.

I’d been sorry to miss seeing them jumping in the bouncy house, eating cotton candy, et cetera. I’d especially wanted to see the twins, who don‘t have a lot of prior birthday party experience and get super-thrilled if one of the kids in their preschool class so much as brings in cupcakes.

When my husband got out his iPod to show me the pictures and videos I was surprised, though.

They were all of HIM!

I’m totally serious. I saw shots of my husband jumping in the bouncy house, my husband eating cotton candy, and he and his friends clowning around.

I’m like, “Where’s the kids?”

He said, “They were there. See? There’s Baby Boy in the background there.”

Uh huh.

Okay. You couldn’t take ONE shot of your beautiful children enjoying the party?

Fortunately, I am facebook friends with the mom in question, who managed to get a very nice shot of Baby Boy and Baby Girl eating cotton candy. And kindly tagged me.

At least SOME of us have our priorities straight!

photo by J. Alino

A Timely Cartoon

from The Laughter Ward on facebook

Just A Picture

I'm Still Not Blogging. Really.

In case you missed it, I'm taking a break from blogging for the month of November.

But just to keep you entertained, here's another cartoon.

Which, once again, I did not write.

Comic from xkcd.com

And now for a word from our sponsors...

Okay, I don't really have any sponsors.

What I meant was, I'm taking a short break for the month of November.

I think I mentioned this last year, but November is National Novel Writing month. This year I'm going to try AGAIN to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days.

It didn't really go that well last year. But if at first you don't succeed, and all of that...

Plus they give me this cool web badge JUST FOR PARTICIPATING!

So in the meantime, please enjoy this cartoon.

Which I did not write.

But it's funny.
 
A Chuck & Beans cartoon by Brian from the Shoebox Blog (www.shoeboxblog.com)