Oh no she didn't! Take Two

After managing to shower and dress in actual clothing for two whole consecutive days, this morning I succumbed and reverted back to my true form. Yes, I did it. I walked Kiddo to the bus in my jammies and flip flops.

My rationalizations for reverting to type follow:

- The bus picks her up at the end of our driveway. It isn't like I was up at the corner with a bunch of other parents (ahem, like last year...)

- I brushed my hair so I wasn't utterly disheveled as per my typical morning look

- I put a fleece vest on over my (15 year old, Ithaca Festival) t-shirt and had on yoga pants, so I wasn't exactly indecent, just a bit.........rumpled around the edges

- We didn't walk outside until the bus was turning onto our street, so I wasn't parading my nighties for the world to see for more than 45 seconds

Anyhow, I'd be willing to bet I am jammified more often than not when the bus picks Kiddo up, so they might as well get used to it. Actually, I'd be willing to bet that within a month or two, I'll no longer escort her all the way to the end of the driveway, but remain on the porch and wave as she makes that brief walk to the street all by herself.

Now, I'll just collect my Mother of the Year award and be on my way...

The rain, rain, rain came down, down, down

Hum dum dum ditty dum
Hum dum dum
Oh the wind is lashing lustily
And the trees are thrashing thrustily
And the leaves are rustling gustily
So it's rather safe to say
That it seems that it may turn out to be
It feels that it will undoubtedly
It looks like a rather blustery day, today
It sounds that it may turn out to be
Feels that it will undoubtedly
Looks like a rather blustery day today...

Yep, it is a rainy, rainy day here. It started raining overnight and is expected to continue for the indefinite future. Makes me think of this:

And also of this (language warning: Eddie talks a bit more "R" than my blog tends to be normally):



and also of this poem, which was the first poem (other than a nursery rhyme) I ever memorized. My mom taught it to me when I was 2 or 3, and I subsequently have taught it to Kiddo and she recites it now when the weather's dreary just as I did a generation ago:

Rain

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Now, when I first learned this poem, Mom taught me (and then my siblings) to say "Robert Louis Stevenson" at the end, so as a small child, I thought that was actually the last line of the poem. As I got older, I realized it was the poet's name, but that didn't stop me from teaching it to Kiddo the same, exact way.

But you know, as depressing as the forecast is for today:

It gets rapidly worse overnight tonight (note the use of the dreaded "S" word):

And then take a look at the first half of next week:

Soon I'll be changing my tune from all the rain-related stuff to

and



which will invariably make me long for


before too long.....

Yep, I can gripe about the weather pretty much no matter what time of year when I'm feeling cranky enough! Mother Nature loooooves me! I'm a regular Weathery Malcontent! Thank goodness for evil giraffes and confused ducks and Noah to keep me smiling while the rain, rain, rain comes down, down, down... if Kiddo didn't seem to be brewing up some germies (she appears to be well on her way to a Niagara Falls Nostrils experience, yee-ha), I'd dress us both up in rain gear and go out to stomp in some puddles! As it is, we're going to have Jammies Morning, read books (I believe she has a few Skippyjon Jones books picked out already) and build a mansion for her dino and "teeny-tiny guy" collection instead. Jammies Morning can definitely boost spirits, dontcha know!

Oh no, she didn't!

Oh yes, I did. I just walked Kiddo the bus stop, four houses up at the corner of our street, in my jammies. Granted, I'm not decked out in Victoria's Secret lingerie, just a t-shirt and pajama pants, and I had my barn coat on over them, plus I'd brushed my teeth and hair and washed my face. (I also put clogs on as the sidewalk is a wee bit too landmined with goose poop to traipse about barefoot safely.) So, it wasn't exactly "just rolled out of bed" (besides which, I've been up since just about 6), but it wasn't "ready to hop into the car and head out into the world" either.

Last year, when I was driving Kiddo to preschool every day, I always showered and dressed in actual clothes before heading out. Granted, sometimes they were just my gym clothes, but it wasn't like I was schlepping to preschool sans bra or toothpaste. There were other moms who frequently dropped their kids off while still in a jammified state, and I'll confess that I felt a wee bit superior upon occasion. But now, I'd venture that the school bus stop is different, especially if one is returning to one's home immediately thereafter and it is before 8:30 in the morning besides. Also, in not too many more weeks, we'll have to bundle up and no one will be able to tell if I have clothes or jammies on anyhow! (I did get called on my jammies by the other mom at the bus stop today. She said that she was jealous, actually...)

The main reason I wasn't so up-and-at-'em this morning was because I'm fighting a losing battle with a nasty head cold. All I wanted to do today was stay in bed, perhaps with an eye open to watch Matt and Meredith, but certainly not doing anything more productive. Obviously, I couldn't have my wish, what with the kiddo having to be roused, fed, glasses washed and hair done, supervised while dressing and toothbrushing, and making sure that she had everything she needed for school. She came home on Friday without her lunchbag, so by day 2 we already had made one emergency trip back over to school to collect a left-behind item. Couldn't have that happen on my watch, now could I? So, I was up but not necessarily so very at 'em, and yes, I did wear my jammies to the bus stop. A precedent was set, the slippery slope and all that, and I have a feeling that until I'm once more gainfully employed and needing to be on my way after the bus arrives, there will be many more mornings when my jammies strut the catwalk - erm, I mean sidewalk - to the corner.

I figure as long as I'm not still in my pajamas at 3 when the bus drops her off, I'm doing all right...

(PS - Still loving the bulbous bouffant from my previous post. It cracks me up every time. Hee! Oh and yes, they are Canadian, for those of you who wondered, eh...)

Spring Break, preschool-style

Today is the last day of the kiddo's Spring Break (all the area schools have the same week off for break, I do believe). Our week off started out with the kiddo suffering from the stomach bug that has been going around, so not exactly the best start, what with the barfing and all. However, by midweek she was back in form and we could take advantage of the ridiculously gorgeous weather we've been having. (Seriously, highs in the 70s to upper 80s is unheard of 'round here - the year before last we were still having SNOW this same week!) We hit the playground at our favorite park a few times, did the zoo with some friends, visited our favorite local farm (where the week old lambs were giving me major flashbacks), played in the yard, did some actual yardwork - Hubby and the kiddo even got all the deck furniture scrubbed down and set up, so we had lunch outside yesterday afternoon - and capped off the week with our first trip to the gardening store, where we purchased many seeds, all from the kiddo's carefully written and illustrated list. This afternoon, we started many, many seeds... sunflowers, pumpkins, watermelons, cukes, green beans, sugar snap peas, corn, romaine lettuce and spinach. With any luck, this warm weather will hold and we'll have seedlings ready to go into the ground in a month to six weeks... The kiddo also spent a day at her best friends' house while I drove down to Meadville, PA, and spent the day with one of my oldest friends (as in longest-time - we've been friends since freshman year of high school, so 23 years and counting!) and her brand-spankin'-new baby girl, who was born 5 weeks early just like the kiddo was back in the day. It was strange to be holding such a peanut of a babe and to think that there was a time when the kiddo herself was even smaller than that! Baby Josie is cute as a button and I had a great time getting my newborn baby fix in and visiting with my friend and her husband.

Tomorrow morning, we return to business as usual. The kiddo is back to school and I'm heading back to the gym, which hopefully won't be too crowded now that break week is over and the weather is nice. We have been getting up pretty much at our usual time over the past week, so there shouldn't be any grumpy kids or moms here in the morning, but we will have to get out of our jammies a bit earlier than we have been!

Oh, and on the birthday party front, thanks for the suggestions! I discovered last week that we *do* know some people who live in the same town as the park we love and who are willing to make the reservation for us, so that will save us some serious cash. That puts the "renting a park pavilion" plan at the top of the current list, but the downside there is that if it rains, we're kinda screwed. So far, there's only been one rainy birthday so I'm a bit afraid we'll be tempting fate by scheduling a mostly-outdoors party. Stay tuned for further developments.......

Germtastic

Bleargh. The kiddo and I both brewed up a nice, steaming batch of germs overnight, and have full-blown colds this morning. I swallowed some ibuprofen around 4am and am still running a fever even with the drugs in my system, and the kiddo's got herself a low grade fever and stuffed up head. The ibuprofen is also not doing much to get rid of my pounding headache or to relieve the "on fire" feeling going on in my throat. *whine, moan, whine* So, no school or after-school playdate for her today, and not much of anything for me, either, beyond huddling up underneath several blankets and moaning. Since we're both stuffed up, I'm going to start up what I like to call the Mentholated Rainforest, wherein I get the humidifier cranked up to 11 and Vicks-ified, along with running hot, steamy showers and hanging out in the bathroom. Yep, it's definitely a Mentholated Rainforest-and-several-cups-of-tea kind of day. The kiddo doesn't mind such days because the TV time rules go out when the window when she's sick, and she gets to watch a lot more than normal, which also aids Mommy in being able to sleep - thank heavens for the commercial-free, children's programming channels! I *heart* our digital cable on days like these! At least it is rainy and dreary out so we won't feel like we're missing much by staying indoors in our jammies...

This-n-That

You know how "they" say that you should take at least 10,000 steps a day? I've read that many times, along with helpful hints on how to get more exercise into one's day - you know, park in the farthest spot from the entrance instead of driving around looking for the closest spot, taking the stairs instead of the elevator/escalator, etc. Well, I found out that I do not take nearly as many steps as I thought I do by actually wearing a pedometer for the bulk of one day earlier this week. I put it on when I got dressed around 8am and wore it until 4pm, at which point it registered that I'd taken 2,703 steps. Now, this was not a fancy-shmancy pedometer - it was a freebie that Hubby had been given while touring an assisted living facility (um, not for us or any of our relatives, btw; it was a work-related thing). So, Hubby warned me the guy that gave it to him said that it has a 10% error rate, so while the good news (ha, ha) is that I could've taken closer to 3,000 steps, the bad news is it might only have been around 2500. In reality, 10% either way wouldn't get me so much closer to the 10,000 step goal, so that's a non-factor, I suppose, and while I did more walking (up and down stairs after the kiddo, etc) between 4pm and bedtime, it isn't like I took another 7,000 steps. So, I'm woefully under-moving, is the conclusion I've drawn. Depressing to admit, but also nice to have a realistic picture since I honestly had no idea how many steps I typically take in a day. I wore the pedometer on a pretty average day in terms of movement for me - I didn't go to the gym or run a marathon (ha!) or anything, but I didn't sit on the couch reading or in front of my computer for hours on end, either. I guess I'd figured that my routine day (hey, I'm always running upstairs or downstairs for this or that when I'm home, and there's that flight of stairs at the kiddo's preschool, and we're usually out and about doing things during the afternoons....) included more steps. One more reason to renew my commitment to get to the gym at least 3 times a week - to get those extra 7,000 steps in and get me up to that 10,000 mark!

***
Things that have physcially delayed us while driving the kiddo to preschool in the past 15 days:
- getting stuck behind a snowplow
- getting stuck behind a funeral procession (twice)
- getting stuck by the drawbridge being opened (yeah, kind of an unusual one, but our drive takes us over a drawbridge, so while it is rather cool to see the road just suddenly going straight up in the air as the boats go through and out onto Lake Ontario, it's also a real, literal roadblock and there's no alternate route - we just have to sit there as the road becomes a parking lot for about 10 minutes while the bridge does its thing)
- getting stuck behind a school bus that was picking up kids for about 2 miles before it turned, thankfully, onto a side street (I don't know if the bus was really early or running late, but we usually don't get stopped by buses so I'm guessing this was just a freak thing and hopefully a one-time occurrence!)
- getting stuck on our street by a flock - whoops, I guess technically it'd be a gaggle, now wouldn't it? - of Canada geese who were moseying on across the street en route to the pond behind our property. When I say "moseying" I mean it, too - they were going soooo slowly and I swear honking the horn just slowed them down more!

Things that have made the drive seem much longer while driving the kiddo to preschool in the past 15 days:
- the kiddo repeatedly whistling her version of Flight of the Bumblebee, utilizing her recently acquired mastery of the skill of whistling as well as her entire whistling range which is about 5 notes (Thanks, Little Einsteins, for teaching the kiddo the tune in the first place...)
- the kiddo deciding to count every garage we passed on the way to school, getting up to 119 (not sure if she was counting multi-car garages separately or just one garage per house) and then deciding she "just felt like counting," which she then proceeded to do starting from 1 again
- the kiddo repeatedly singing a snippet of a song they're learning in music class despite repeated pleas to STOP FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, JUST STOP PLEEEEEASE! from her quickly-losing-her-not-very-tight-grip-to-begin-with-on-sanity mommy (the section she keeps singing goes "listen to the water, listen to the water, rolling down the river" and is not recognizable to me either by tune or lyrics.... anyone recognize the words that can maybe help me out? Otherwise, I'm going to have to hunt down the music teacher at preschool, ask her to sing me the song, then bribe her with whatever means necessary to never, ever sing that song again with the kids)
- the kiddo telling the "Knock Knock" classic:
Kiddo: Knock knock!
Mommy: Who's there?
Kiddo: Banana!
Mommy: Banana who?
Kiddo: Knock knock!
Mommy: Who's there?
Kiddo: Banana!
Mommy: Banana who?
Kiddo: Knock knock!
Mommy: Who's there?
Kiddo: Orange!
Mommy: Orange who?
Kiddo: Orange you glad I didn't say banana again? *gales of maniacal laughter*
and by "telling" I mean "repeatedly yelling 'KNOCK KNOCK! I SAID KNOCK KNOCK, MOMMY!!! KNOOOOOOOOOCK KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCK!!!!'" when I stopped responding after about the thirtieth repetition, and then mangling the "orange" punchline and having to say "No, wait, I mean, um...." and starting it over three or four times before getting it mostly right.

***
Another sure sign that spring has sprung? I was brushing our cat this morning and while brushing her, she shed enough fur to make another whole cat, at least. Maybe two, or possibly three smallish kittens... Around our house, Spring = Hairball season!

***
Oh, I wound up not doing anything for April Fools' Day this year. Turned out I couldn't find the supplies I needed in time. Next year, I'll be all over it though, and will get what I need in advance. Stay tuned - we're just 363 days away!! *evil eyebrow wiggle*

***
My new favorite clothing in the world? The "lounge pants" (brand - Gilligan and O'Malley Ultimate) that I found recently at Target. Soooo comfy and cheap, too! I'm practically living in them when I'm at home. I was tempted to not change into real clothes the other day when I had to run to the store, but I refrained and did put actual jeans on for the trip. I love comfy clothes and jammies, and these lounge pants fit excellently into both categories! Heavenly!

***
I may be approaching my late 30s, but I'm still hip enough to have downloaded six songs from this season's American Idol finalists to my iPod. Okay, maybe admitting that I downloaded songs from American Idol isn't hip, but I did, and I enjoyed them thoroughly while running errands when the kiddo was in school this morning! I guess I should score a few "hip" points for having an iPod, at the least. Or is it not even hip to say "hip" anymore? What should I even say? Cool? Happening? With it? Hmmm, this reminds me of one of my favorite Simpsons quotes, with which I shall wrap up this post and get downstairs to test the latest batch of monkey bread that the kiddo and I baked earlier this afternoon (love the way the whole house smells like cinnamon now, too!):

I used to be with it, but then they changed what “it” was, and now what I’m with isn’t it. And what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me. ~ Abraham "Grampa" Simpson