Surrender, Dorothy

The Glory of an Empty Cardboard Box

My girls' weekend ROCKED. On every possible level. It was so great.

But it's private. Yes, it's true -- I do occasionally have boundaries. SURPRISE!

So, instead, I give you the house we made out of the cardboard box Steph's glider came in.

 

Note the fence by Beloved and the shape by moi.

 

We got some markers and puffy paints for the occasion. It reminded me of the cat house Blondie and I made with Pa when we were kids.

 

Beloved made special handles for the window out of duct tape.

The little angel immediately began decorating.

 

I contributed an apple tree.

 

And a sun.

 

Cardboard box houses ROCK.

 

As do half-price roses from the grocery store that have miraculously opened while you were gone for the weekend.

Girls Weekend

I'm off to Lawrence in a few hours to celebrate Steph's pregnancy with two of our three college roommates. The last time we got together sans kids and husbands was in Florida, probably three or four years ago. I can't even remember.

I haven't let myself think about it too much because this week has been so crazy busy, but now that I've completed the tasks that absolutely had to be done today, it's time to hop in the shower and pack and buy a box expensive bottle of fine wine so I can spend a day and two nights remembering what it is like to hang out.

Remember hanging out? It's been a while.

 

 

 

(I know these are blurry. I think they went with our state of mind.)

When Kids Hit School, Parents Hit the Thesaurus

I was reading my friend Liz's blog yesterday. She wrote about how her daughter's teacher told her daughter that "poop" is a bad word, causing Liz and her partner to abandon their poop jokes.

I, lover of the English language, consider no words to be bad. Just sometimes inappropriately used.

I will not be winning any parenting awards when I say that I have a sailor's mouth, sometimes even around my daughter. I don't set out to say "fuck," it just occasionally happens. Still, it does make me somehow proud that she chastises me on my use of the word "stupid" but lets "fuck" sail right on by. Also, she never uses any of the Big Seven herself. We told her a while ago there are certain words that really sound horrible coming out of a child's mouth, and she must be old enough to drive in order to use them. Because only then can they truly be used properly.

This "stupid" thing, though -- I'm going through what Liz is going through with "poop." I've resulted to consulting The Highly Selective Thesaurus for the Extraordinarily Literate, which I keep sitting on my desk at work to frighten off IT people. Bring it on, kindergarten teacher.

Synonyms for "stupid" include:

• Asinine*
• Blockish
• Doltish
• Fatuitous
• Fatuous
• Witless

*One of my all-time favorite put-downs, because people can't tell if you've just called them an ass in polite company or not.

"Poop" alternatives:

• Feces
• Defecation
• Stercoraceous, stercorus (pertaining to feces)
• fecaloid (resembling feces)
• Feculent (fecal matter, full of) = WINNER, WINNER, CHICKEN DINNER!

So thank you, teachers of America, for forcing us parents to elevate our grammar to say the exact same thing in a way our kids don't understand.