Gold

It was a beautiful day yesterday, crisp and cold with that soft golden light that only autumn gives us, so I got up out of my slouching self-pity and my worry and took The Baby outside to build a fairy house.

"We're gonna do WHAT?" she said.

We're building a house for the fairies, I told her, now that winter is coming. She looked at me, dubiously, and then settled down to the practical aspects of building - the stick walls, the mossy insulation, the leafy roof, the pinecone couches and the little rocks lining the way in.

I gave her some seashells, hidden over the summer for something that I now forget, and she carried them out to the yard, to the small secret house like a treasure.

Our hands were dirty and cold, but the yellow sunlight falling through the trees made me feel beloved, God's love through my hair and falling into my spine like a shower of gold.

And then I remembered all at once that it was Michaelmas, so I quickly made preparations - roasted a chicken with carrots and garlic and onions and potatoes and thyme, made purple cabbage with currants (not the raisin-y things, but the little red fruits that grow around here), made gluten-free Irish soda bread and an angel food cake from a mix.

"An autumn feast!" said The Boy, delighted, when he came home. The two older kids quickly made the dining room table beautiful, covering it in the crumpled white tablecloth and red leaves from our yard, setting it carefully with my grandmother's china, pouring cranberry juice and apple cider into our tall wine glasses. The world will be hard; I will not.

It's Monday and I Am Glooooooomy

... for no real reason, other than this is my autumnal torpor.
I haven't finished putting all the songs up yet at the September Songs post, but I will later today, and you're more than welcome to add some more suggestions in the meantime.

My Kitchen Party post is up. I mope around in it a bit, write a bit about my poor patient husband and then make a list of my favorite cookbooks. Go on over and cheer me up, puh-leez.
xo

September Songs

My dad was just here and asked me to look up the following incredibly poignant song:



And after listening to that, we both had to walk off in different directions so no one could see us snivel. Ah, September. You and your melancholy music.

Also: the hauntingly beautiful Who Knows Where the Time Goes by the hauntingly gross looking Fairport Convention:


Dudes! BUY A HAIRBRUSH! And poor Sandy Denny - she died from FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS, which really haunts me since I do that at least once a year. Fall down the stairs, that is. Maybe I should wear a helmet.

My very favorite gloomy autumn song, although it's very November-specific:

Gloomy! My husband and Tom Waits share a birthday, which does not surprise me.

So tell me what YOU are listening to that sounds like autumn, and I'll add songs onto my list. Are there any HAPPY autumnal songs, or is that a contradiction?

YOUR SUGGESTIONS!
Sarah:
Autumn Sweater by Yo La Tengo:

V. autumnal. My son declared this song "funky." High praise!

Jupiter Sinclair suggested, quite brilliantly, Moondance.

I figured out what I did wrong. Genius!

Janet suggested that I stop moping around and listen to this, which is what she listens to ALL THE TIME at her house!


The lovely Kathryn says that Shoot The Moon by Norah Jones reminds her of autumn:


Veronica Mitchell suggested Autumn in New York, and whenever I hear that song, I am quite stricken that I've never actually been to New York, especially in the autumn:


Recovering Sociopath suggested THIS Tom Wait's song, which is one of my most favorite songs in the whole world:

My favorite line? "The cat'll sleep in the mailbox and we'll never go to town."

Gretchen says that she loves to play We're Going to Be Friends by The White Stripes this time of year, just to drive her kids nuts:

Excellent!

Steph at Adventures in Babywearing says that Roscoe by Midlake sounds like autumn to her:

That's one of my favorite songs! Hooray!

Jeana loves September Morn by Neil Diamond:


Jennifer picked the fallish-feeling Living In The Twilight by The Weepies:


Subspace Beacon chose Four Strong Winds, and here are Ian and Sylvia Tyson singing just that:

Wouldn't this be an evocative and gorgeous choice for Canadian national anthem? Yes it would, except for me bawling at every hockey game I attend.

For Jennifer: Cool Night By Paul Davis!


And for a certain little red-haired autumn girl:

I hope it was great!

For Nomotherearth - Try To Remember from The Fantasticks, which someone I KNOW SINGS ALL THE TIME:

I think it might be my mom. Is it you, mom? I just about fell out of my chair when I heard it. (UPDATE! It is my father.)

Magpie says that this list needs Kurt Weill's September Song, and I fully agree with her that it needs the Frank Sinatra version:


Be Like The Squirrel, Girl loves When Ye Go Away by The Waterboys. Here's a cover:


NotSoSage says that this Bon Iver and Bowerbirds song feels like autumn to her:


theflyingmum wants you to go here and listen to "Are You Happy Now?".

Thanks, everyone! It's a really fun list. If you suggested something and it's not on the list, it's either because a) I forgot or b) I couldn't find a decent-sounding version. I appreciated all of your suggestions, though!

Wah wah wah, someone was mean!

I deleted the mean comment (this is my blog, after all) but it was on my post about Eat, Pray, Luv. It was a bitchy post, without a doubt, but it was righteously bitchy. Bitchy in the cause of goodness. I wasn't even a little bit jealous, although I've written pretty freely about jealousy at other times.


There's a difference in writing a critical blog post about a well-known author and in some one anonymously leaving a nasty comment on a blog. For one thing, my public identity is attached to what I've written, so I'm taking ownership of my words and not just saying mean faceless things. For another, the author (or public figure) is unlikely to read what I've written, while I certainly will read whatever people comment. Blogs are more like conversations, and statements that would be wildly inappropriate during a chat in my living room are likely to be just as inappropriate here. But books - and the messages behind them - are legitimate things to criticize. Feel free to disagree with me on any post you like, of COURSE, but I do think that there's an obvious difference.

Anyhow. You can tell I don't get mean comments a lot, eh? Geez. My post at Five Minutes For Parenting is up, and I BAWLED writing the entire last paragraph, although I don't know if it was entirely successful. Go have a look.

I spent the day away from home today - this is going to be a REALLY EXCITING STORY, so BUCKLE UP! - going to my out-of-town dentist.

I think I may go to the dentist unusually often. I certainly write about it more than other bloggers seem to, which may be because I have an unusually spiffy dental hygienist, or it may be because my gum disease has spread to my brain. Either/or. But you will all be very glad to hear (except for that one anonymous commenter who called me a "jealous bitch" earlier today. Just try to console yourself with the thought of my gum disease, alright?) that my gums are at a record level of greatness. Hooray for my gums! Hooray for my faithful flossing!

"Gums" is a funny word. GUMSGUMGUMS. The more you write it, the weirder it gets.

And now I'm going to write my Five Minutes for Parenting post for tomorrow. Off I go with my EXCELLENT GUMS.

Everything I Know About Being Married

Yesterday was oddly hard, one of those days where you feel sad and can't put your finger on the why of it. I think I might be getting depressed, I fretted to my husband in the evening while he worked on his annual fall project, wringing my hands.
He paused, and said very, very gently that he was sorry that I was feeling sad, but that he thought I would probably feel better in a couple of days (1), and in the meantime, would I like a glass of wine?

And I did feel comforted. He is wise and a rather striking contrast to me and my family of origin, where we're always fretting and miserable and elated and in some sort of trouble. Don't worry about things that you can't do anything about would be his motto (2), and one of these days I should have it translated into Latin to fly proudly above our castle.

I had my husband up on a tremendous pedestal for ages. For years. He could not only do no wrong in my eyes but he also was the authority on everything. I quoted him constantly. I mean, I think he's a great guy now and a good dad and a rather pleasant husband and a hard worker and all sorts of good things, but just imagine if instead of having this standard-issue mommy blog, it was instead entitled MY HUSBAND: WHY YOU SHOULD REVERE HIM LIKE A GOD. It was a bit unhealthy. And a bit... oh, irritating for not only everyone who knows me but also for my husband, who doesn't want to be revered like a god.

And then he fell.

I could almost tell you the exact day that it happened - I know it was in the first couple of weeks after I had the Boy and I was moody and hormonal and my husband snapped at me. And just like that, KERBANG. That was all it took. Maybe the pillar was already kind of shaky. Maybe it was time.

I could not love someone who was a fallible human being, I decided. D-I-V-O-R-C-E, I decided.

And while I was deciding all this, he continued being the same kind, considerate person he's always been, tucking The Girl in and rocking The Boy for hours after work each night and working so hard to keep everyone fed and clothed and housed and I thought, well, maybe I'll stay for a little bit longer. It would only be fair.

That was the bad year for our marriage, but when it was through, I'd figured a lot of things out that I'd been clueless about before:
1. I had not been pulling my weight in any way in our marriage up until then. See, because my husband was perfect, he didn't need any support or encouragement or help. Because he was an emotionless blank for me to project my emotions onto, I could dump on him endlessly. That was handy.
2. Even though my husband is a remarkably fine man, I perhaps do not need to quote him every five minutes.
3. Marriage is not about one partner being idolized by the other.
4. I was not very good at that whole marriage thing.
5. Being married even to an imperfect human being still seemed better than the alternatives, which would involve me tucking my own kids in at night and not having anyone around to gently remind me when I was having PMS(3) and not a full-fledged depressive illness.
6. My husband can make robots. Where else could I find another man who can makes robots AND who would put up with my crap, which I realized after that year was fairly considerable?
7. It's very, very mean to your spouse to constantly threaten them with divorce. Either divorce 'em or get over it and stop being abusive.
8. It is a remarkable thing in this world to have another human being who loves you and who you love back and who shares your values and laughs at your jokes and comforts you when you are sad. Do not take this lightly. And if that person loads the dishwasher and tucks the kids in and brings you home bottles of wine on hard days, you would be a stone cold MORON to think about walking out.

And that is everything I know about being married.

(1) Guess why.
(2) That's his motto, not mine. I haven't figured out what mine will be yet.
(3) There's a big hint for (1) right there.

The First Day of Autumn!

It's Monday and my Kitchen Party post is up, complete with EXTREMELY RARE (and also extremely fuzzy) pictures of The Girl. That NEVER happens!


There are also some pictures of pies. I was testing out recipes from The Complete Canadian Living Baking Book, which Random House sent to me, and I have to say that I think it's pretty spiffy - Canadian Living* has REALLY excellent recipes, and this is a solid, beautifully illustrated and designed cookbook, with an interesting and diverse selection of recipes. It would be a good Christmas present for the bakey person on your list, but you can't buy it until tomorrow. And that is my Awesome Book Review.



Now go read my post! xo

(*I can't believe I apparently have to clarify this, but Canadian Living is a Canadian women's magazine and not a particularily awesome and Canadian-only way of cooking. Although it DOES have excellent recipes.)

The Big Boring Seasonal Notebook Post....

Okay, this was supposed to be a lavishly illustrated post but my husband is feeling like crud, so I'm not going to bug him to scan everything in for me. (What? Learn to use the scanner myself? Pshaw!)

The point of my seasonal notebooks is not to be in any way a daybook - it's not to keep track of my dentist appointments or whatever, but rather a place to keep ideas in a reasonably organized place. Right now, I'm using my autumn notebook - my winter notebook will come out in mid-November. I use big fat spiral-bound notebooks, the kind with lots of dividers. You COULD use a binder, but I find them irritating - I prefer just gluing in things. You could also use a standard, non-divided notebook and just mark off the different areas with post-it notes, but that's a bit messy. Your call.

My autumn notebook is divided into:
- back to school. This is where I kept lists of clothes that the kids already had and what they needed, as well as recipes for lunchbox things and other schoolish things. I have a certain grim list of ALL of the occasions that my kids expect me to make cupcakes for, and it's LONG. I'm also collecting ideas for medieval feasts because GUESS what I am doing with The Girl's grade four class? Oh, I'm just lucky.

- Halloween. Recipes, costume ideas, pages ripped out from magazines of hilarious Halloween decorations, book lists of scary but not TOO scary stories and movies for the kids, crafts to do with them and ideas for Halloweenie fall outings.

- Little Autumn Holidays. Michaelmas, Johnny Appleseed's birthday, the first day of autumn, Martinmas and Remembrance Day and, sadly, Thanksgiving, all have smaller sections. (Thanksgiving is basically just showing up at all of our parents' houses, although now I have a tiny list of gluten-free stuffings and pumpkin desserts to bring with me. Whoop-dee-doo!) Again, in these sections, I keep craft and recipe lists, as well as Bible readings and book ideas.

- Autumn homekeeping. Lists of seasonal chores - bleh - ideas for decorating, general autumn-y recipes, and anything else that's sort of seasonally relevant go in here.
And finally:

- GETTING READY FOR CHRISTMAS. Ack. There, I'm keeping lists of who I send Christmas cards to, ideas for this year's Christmas card, lists of people we give gifts to and ideas for each, as well as lists of gifts as I buy them. Any craft-y sort of things that I should get done before Christmas goes here, too. Oh, and Christmas CDs and movies that I want to buy.

And so each of the four seasonal notebooks goes much like that. In my Christmas one, for example, I can see from year to year (I -rather unusually wisely for ME - use the same Christmas book every year) what Christmas cookie recipes were well-received and which ones were duds, as well as all of the rest of it. My ideas for Advent, for smaller holidays throughout the season and our Christmas decorating and celebrating plans are figured out in it, as well as ideas for snow days and lists of WINTER chores. V. handy.

The Baby Is Silly and Your Ideas Used Shamelessly!

Have you read any of the Milly Molly Mandy books? The Baby LOVES them - her favorite is the story where Milly Molly Mandy gets to mind the general store on her own for an afternoon. Good times! I can just see the Baby as a store owner, screaming fiercely at anyone who was just loitering and not buying fast enough.

She also has a remarkably unattractive Milly Molly Mandy cloth doll and has taken one of those inexplicable loves for the homely little thing - it now sleeps in her bed with her and is the subject of many of her rambling bedtime conversations with her dad.

"Milly Molly Mandy is allergic to water," she told him last night.
Oh, that's too bad, he said.
"She's not allergic to picking her nose, though."

That would be truly a tragic allergy, wouldn't it?

Hey, she's in nursery school (or "library school", as it's called locally) now! For a morning a week, she sings little songs and does finger rhymes and listens to stories and does REALLY LAME crafts. My younger two children are just utterly not shy - The Baby marched up to a little girl yesterday and announced that she was going to sit beside her and play with her RIGHT NOW. Years of bossy popularity await!

Okay, here are some topics that people kindly suggested to me:

Lisa Milton: Read any good books lately?
Nope! Not really. I need to go to the library.

All Rileyed Up: Charlie Brown.
I read that Charles Shultz had never liked poor Charlie Brown and that made me feel very, very sad. No WONDER the poor little guy never had good things happen to him.

All Rileyed Up: A post on the absence of Alpha Dogma.
I miss you, AD. Come back. I promise I'll change.

Boliath: I'd be interested to read how you have dealt with questions about life and death from your kids.
The short answer is that we are practicing Christians and the longer and more puzzling answer is that my kids have never, ever asked me about death.
EVER.
AT ANY TIME.
Which raises some questions in my mind. I mean, isn't that a fairly standard kid thing to wonder about? But they're VERY like their father and really seem to subscribe to his Do Not Worry About Things That Can't Be Changed policy.

Cristan: eating locally grown, in season foods. How feasible is that for you, living so far north?
I don't live in the arctic or anything - I live right in the middle of farm country, actually! But what can easily be farmed here (beef and dairy, mainly) limits our ability to have an all-local diet, unless I want to live on nothing but milk and pot roast. Right now, while my parents' HUGE GARDEN is being super productive, a lot of our food is very, very local - and a lot of local people live on moose and venison as well. We can easily buy locally-made honey, smoked fish and maple syrup, but local produce and grain products are hard to come by year round.

Hannah: I remember one time a couple months ago maybe, you posted a personal "to-do list" and one of the items was "have a fourth child." As someone who also has there and thinks about this issue almost obsessively, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
I have health issues that are largely what keeps us from going ahead with Baby Number Four. But I'm also worried that my husband might hop a freight train, because three kids are enough for him. And he also says, rather wisely, that someone eventually has to be the baby of the family, that I can't just go on having babies forever.

I would still really like another baby, though.

Susanne: Write about the good things about small town life!
My kids have no real idea that certain social things that might be a lot more obvious in other settings even exist - everyone in town is sort of poorish, to varying degrees, and so no one looks down on you too much for coming to school in beat-up jeans and a hand-me-down shirt. A simple walk to the grocery store takes half an hour because of all of the conversations you have to have on the way, since you know EVERYONE. And small town gossip is more hilarious.

That's enough for one day! I'll try and get to the rest of the ideas - ESPECIALLY the notebook one - over the weekend, unless my husband decides that we need to go visit his parent's camp.

Welcome to my WORLD OF TERROR!

Today's post at Five Minutes For Parents is FLAT OUT the scariest thing I have ever written.
YIKESYIKESYIKESYIKES
Thanks for helping me out of my writing slump yesterday! Now go read today's post.

For Chelle: Upcoming Crazy Holidays

September 22 - First Day of Autumn
We're going for a hike this weekend - oh, hooray - and doing some autumnal crafts. I think we're making a fall banner and leaf-shaped sugar cookies. We also start lighting candles in the evening after this date.

September 26 - Johnny Appleseed's Birthday
Apple pie, baby!

September 29 - Michaelmas
I'm making an angel food cake, and we're going to make kites.

October 13 - Thanksgiving! Wacky!

Veronica's Idea - Co-Sleeping YAY or NAY

Co-sleeping is wonderful when your baby is brand new and tiny and nursing all the time and you're floating on a sea of hormonal baby luv. I could just CRY even thinking about it.

Co-sleeping is less wonderful when your baby is six and wants to talk in detail about his/her most recent really bad dream in the middle of the night as well as hog the prime middle-of-the bed real estate and your husband is sleeping on the couch. I could just CRY even thinking about it.

Sue's Idea: How Much I Love Her

Oh Sue! You are so awesome. You also have really good hair in your header picture, and your Farewell Sweet Maiden post made me laugh so hard that I am too delicate to say what nearly happened. And then I read that post where you thought that you might possibly have a deadly blood clot and I felt a deep kinship with you, my fellow overly imaginative hypochondriac and surprisingly blond sister.

But I'm also very competitive about being the only really funny one in any group - it's true and it's obnoxious - and you're really funny, so stay where you are and I will love you from afar.
xo
Beck

Janet's Idea - Creative Lunch Box Ideas!

I love this, mainly because it's only the third week of school and the well has run DRY.
And really, I generally just look at old Vegan Lunchbox posts for ideas, substituting "pot roast" for "tofu", of course. My kids have REALLY BIG lunchbags.
Here are some things I've done in the past, to various degrees of success:
1) Lunch box tacos - Hot taco glop in a thermos, taco shells CAREFULLY packed in the lunch box and a divided container with tomatoes and lettuce and cheese. Oh, the fun!
2) Hot soup in a thermos, aka "What I Pack The Girl Every Day Of School." Kid likes her soup.
3) Cheese strings vaguely modified to look like fingers, but only near Halloween.

What do you do? Let me know so I may learn from your lunchpacking wisdom.

Brother, Can You Spare A Metaphorical Dime?

I am out of things to write about, just temporarily. I hope temporarily - it would be kind of sad to realize that I've managed to drain my lifetime supply of Things To Write About. I would probably have to take up crafting - plastic canvas embroidery! scrapbooking! - to burn off all of my creative energy.

So give me something to write about, would you? Suggest a topic or an idea and I'll see what grabs me.

Monday

We had a loss of sorts in our family this weekend and it was just ridiculously sad. I wrote all about it at The Kitchen Party, so if you could go over there and read it (and comment over there, puh-leez!), you can share in my deep, deep, pet fish-related sadness.

And now I'm going to go scrub my kitchen floor. Oh boy!

Toast of the town

The Boy has recently decided that he should be more helpful around the house. Isn't that nice? I do like helpful people. And his helpfulness, he has decided, will consist of making toast. Lots and lots of toast.

"Want a nice piece of toast?" he's constantly asking me. And if I say yes, he scampers off to the kitchen and I can hear him hauling a chair over to the breadbox, the clink of the metal door opening, the sound of the toaster handle being pushed down - and I don't know how to describe it, but I could recognize that sound in my sleep. Then he hurries around, getting a plate down from the cupboard - which requires more chair pushing - finding a butter knife, getting the jam we made in July out of the fridge. And then he brings me my toast and my GOSH, he's proud.

"Mmm! Looks delicious!" I say. And I am a big liar. I hate toast. I don't like dry crunchy food. I don't like trail mix or cold cereal or anything with that particular type of texture, and toast is probably at the top of that list. Yucko, toast.

The Boy is the only boy, flanked by sisters, and he's a twitchy, impulsive, LOUD little guy. I would say that 75% of the trouble in our house is gotten into by him, with another 20% going to his twerpy little sister and a bare 5% going to his oldest sister, who is a Good Girl and also kind of sneaky. And last night was pretty miserable for him - and for us - with him in seemingly endless amounts of trouble - he hit his sister, he threw the remote, blah blah blah, upstairs and sobbing in Time Out.

But this morning he woke up and wanted to be helpful. So what can I do but eat the toast, sticky with the bright red jam made from strawberries that he picked with his industrious hands and smile at him, my good boy who is trying so hard. His heart would just break if he found out, so shhh. Don't tell him.

Big Doings At My House!

We spent yesterday in the emergency room! And WHY? Go to 5 Minutes For Parenting and you can read all about who had an accident yesterday and nearly ended up in a cast.
(and I need an autumnal picture and quote for my header. Suggestions?)

Snips And Snails

"Little horses," The Baby just informed me, "Are made out of plastic. Big horses are made out of guts."
What are you made out of? I asked her.
"Guts and bones and blood," she said. "And Jesus loves me."

We almost have to turn the furnace on - the house is hovering on the edge of 20, which is comfortable enough with a sweater but if it gets even half a degree colder.... And the spiders are scuttling indoors, trying to get safe before that first killing frost hits. We get big spiders here, although they're not dangerous, wolf spiders that could crowd your palm, hairy and solid (the spiders, not - I hope - your palm.). And one of them thought that it had found a safe winter home in the storage bin that we keep our winter sheets - the comfy flannel ones - in, and then I unwittingly made our bed up with our comfy flannel sheets this Friday and the disgruntled wolf spider bit the crap out of my right flank while I slept that night.

And that is what I thought was a rash all these past few days, this constellation of NOW INFECTED spider bites. Some extremely expensive cream and they're on their way to healing, but I now feel like I'm starring in my own private miniature horror movie, this shudderingly horrible thing that happened to me while I did not even know it.

Guts and bones and blood.

The Baby - to wrap things up in a circular fashion, the circle being MY FAVORITE, apparently - fell off a small chair this morning, and was crying and crying afterwards, although I didn't think she'd been hurt. Where did it hurt? I asked her, and she was finally able to sob out "Oh, my heart. I hurt my heart." This awful, unreliable world.

One of the little prayers that The Baby particularly likes is:

Dear Father, hear and bless
Thy beasts and singing birds:
And guard with tenderness
Small things that have no words.

And that is also one of the first things I read to her when she was a tiny, tiny baby, her eyes stormy grey and staring at the page, at my face, with this fathoms deep gaze, this wordless little thing. Now she is a big girl - well, bigger - and follows me around all day with her clever words and her seemingly endless practicality, until she tumbles off something as silly as a child's chair and is unable to say why she's so sad, her hands full of little plastic horses.

A Hive of Activity

I am allergic to our new, amazing smelling detergent. It is my fate, apparently, to have to use the unscented stuff, which is obviously the saddest, saddest thing ever.

Have I ever mentioned that I love guest posting? First, there is the fun of seeing MY writing at a blog I admire - always fun - and then there's the gleeful delight in having bloggers that I love write glowing introductions for me, which fills me with a narcissistic joy. Veronica Mitchell of Toddled Dredge (and if you don't read her, you are MISSING OUT. She is one of my very, very favorites) asked me right before Baby #4's arrival to guest post for her, which I was very cheerful to do and it is UP today.

I owe roughly every person on earth an email, and if you have written to me in the past two weeks, you should know that I am NOT ignoring you, but that I've been sick. I hope to catch up soonish. And today is going to be busy, so I'd best get off my computer.

Bleh!

Well, that weekend was just completely HORRIBLE! I felt AWFUL - and yet I feel remarkably better this morning. My cough cleared up, my back stopped aching... although I'm taking my Interesting Rash to the doctor for inspection this morning. We will see.

In the meantime, I have my Kitchen Party post up and it's about a) how this is The Baby's last full year at home (MY FREAKING HEART) and b) a very good recipe for no-bake peanut butter balls. And now I'm off to call my doctor. xo

My back got hurt on Friday and now it hurts all the way DOWN INTO MY LEFT KNEE.
I have hives.
The cold that I had for the past week and a half has spread into my lungs and now I have this disturbing chest rattle and a deep, scary cough.

I woke my husband up in the middle of the night and had him talk me out of going and doing a google search on all three of those things together. It might be BUBONIC PLAGUE, I decided. It might be EBOLA.
"They're not related," he mumbled in his sleep. "That would be a bad idea. Stay here. Go see your doctor on Monday."
And so I fell asleep, content. If he said that it wasn't the plague, well hey. Good enough for me.

I got a book out of the library called something like "7 Conversations To Force Your Husband To Have That Will Strengthen Your Marriage, Honest." He looked pained when I mentioned it, which means, OF COURSE, that we will have all SEVEN marriage strengthening conversations tonight. And then I will wake him up in the middle of the night about some stupid thing I'm worried about and he will reach out his hand, sleeping, and stroke my hair, mumbling that it's all right, don't worry.

It's funny to think - now - that at the same time that I was mentally making lists of attractive famous men and being FOURTEEN, I was also noticing my eventual husband for the first time, and now he's my patient husband who doesn't appear to mind my waking him up in the middle of the night all the time.

So at the very top of my list of people that I found attractive as a young teenager and that I still find attractive now? My husband.
(And then David Bowie.)

Oh dear.

I laboured away all morning, FUMING, with SPARKS FLYING OUT OF MY HEAD and TEARS OF FURY coursing down my face at a post on how much I truly, truly loathed Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love - and then went away from my computer to visit with a friend and her TOTALLY CUTE BABY. Upon my return to the computer, my outraged post was GONE.

My father suggests that perhaps it was an Act of God. He heard the earlier bit, which was nearly deranged and spittle-flecked in its fury. PERHAPS.

(Someone I actually respect emailed me very gently this morning to say that she found part of this post quite mean spirited, so I'm taking down that part while I think about it.)

Edited to add: David Bowie singing "I'm Deranged."

I might be alone in this but I think he's handsome. Oh David Bowie! You're so dreamy!

Well. I did not, in fact, die, nor did I have listeria or any of the other nightmarish, neurotic things that occurred to me over the past week. None of them were terribly likely, but thanks to my Interesting Medical History, I am now convinced that at ANY MOMENT I am likely to be smote by some dread, interesting ailment.

But this was just a cold/stomach bug combo. And now my house is a big mess AND I'm behind on all of my blogging, which is sad, sad, sad. So I'm going to try to catch up on both today and in the meantime, my 5 Minutes for Parenting post is up, which is a post I'd written a couple of years ago and still one of my favorites.

(Oh, and that super evil, deep black chocolate cake icing was because - as my husband informs me - he used Dutch process cocoa. Now you know.)

My Name Is Paddle To The Sea

My birthday cake - and my birthday - was very nice, thank you. My husband made me a very good triple layer chocolate cake with a crazy delicious chocolate cream cheese icing and it is all gone now. The Baby came shrieking into the living room while he was baking:

"Daddy has made LOTS AND LOTS OF CAKES! He made three round ones for you and a big rectangle for ME!"

36! It sparkles, apparently.

And then I spent the rest of the weekend sick. But I feel pretty much better today.

One of my friends suggested that we have a middle child exchange today - school doesn't start until tomorrow, and the back to school excitement had pretty much disintegrated into fractious squabbling, so what better way to cope than by trading six year olds? Hers is a girl child (and a very nice one) and so I got to pretend that I was the mother of many daughters for most of the day, which was nice but I missed my Boy. And then he came home pale and quiet and I thought that maybe he'd had too much sun until he threw up ALL over the bathroom.

It's NOT listeria*. It is a stomach bug that is going around town. Apparently, I live in Diseaseville. Cootiesburg. Lower Retchington. And we're starting this school year off on just a GREAT note.

*That's for my own benefit. We haven't eaten ANY of the affected foods, and there is a STOMACH BUG GOING AROUND TOWN, so what seems more likely, I tell myself sternly.

The leaves are changing, quietly, around me. The Girl handed me a red maple leaf today and it sat patriotically and wistfully on my lap. This is your last fall with a small child beside you, something in me whispers. Shut up, I whispered back.

Labour day!

Thanks for all of the birthday wishes yesterday - that was lovely!

My Kitchen Party post is up - it was supposed to be about how hard it is to pack nutritious, child-appealling school lunches, but degenerated into a semi-violent rant about how much I hate parents who try and smuggle peanuts into their kids' lunches in a school with a peanut ban in place. I HATE THEM. GRRRRRR. So head on over and watch me lose my temper and rant.

And more importantly, I hope and pray that those of you in the storm-infected areas are safe.