Another lesson learned from BlogHer: Next time line up some posts for the following week. I have been staying up a few extra hours each night trying to catch up. Still not there yet. It didn’t help that my son dragged me into his room at 2 a.m. last night and I spent the rest of the night in his bed. And dreamed about Twitter.
So today, I was scrolling through my brother’s vacation photos with the kids and we saw this picture of a marmot. Quicker than a rodent could scurry under a cereal bowl, Opie said: “No, it’s not a marmot, it’s a charmot. And if you leave Lucky Charms on the ground, he will come out and sniff them. And then he will eat them.”
Opie has a good friend, a sweet little boy named Nick. They are the same size (that is, smallish) and have the same shade of blond hair. They’ve been mistaken for twins more than once.
In recent weeks, though, Nick has become more than just a preschool pal. He is a character of epic proportion, a creature of legend. Many, many times a day, we hear “Did you know: Nick can … ” or “This one time? Nick? He … ” Nick has all the amazing skills and thrills of an imaginary friend, except he is based on a true story. We have been collecting Nick citations and believe me, this is just a small sampling:
One time Nick gave a waiter a one hundred million ninety tip.
Did you know Nick’s middle name is Rockethead?
One time at Nick’s house a big tree got strucken by lightning.
Nick can throw a bocce ball up into space.
Nick’s grandpa drives a wrecking ball crane.
Nick dumps milk on his chin to have a milk mustache and then puts it onto his side for a milk beard.
Did you know Nick has a water piano?
Nick built a rocket ship.
This one time, Nick’s dog fell in love with Courtney’s dog.
Nick made a TV show called “The Muffins.”
Nick has a camper.
I really can’t wait to find out what Nick will be up to next.
That’s where I’ll be all day today, on an end-of-year field trip with the entire school; an event my daughter totally guilted me into attending. To get her back, here are some goofy pictures of her getting in touch with her animal side on our last trip to this zoo.
Mostly unrelated funny story: Once Jeff was flipping channels and “Snakes on a Plane” came on. I immediately yelled “M-f-ing snakes on a m-f-ing plane!” And he looked at me like I was completely insane, because somehow he had entirely missed the SoaP pop-culture moment.
But within about 30 seconds (no kidding), Samuel L. Jackson delivered the all-important line, and my credibility was rightfully restored.
*Forgive me, mother(hood uncensored), for I have skipped a day of shredding. I tweaked my neck somehow–not from the Shred–so I gave myself yesterday off. Today, though, it’s back on. Even though I have company at home (a kid waiting out her “24 hours fever-free” quarantine).
Despite the rough start*, we did have a nice weekend, filled with the usual stuff (birthday party, Sunday school, ice-skating lessons) and capped off by just-the-four-of-us Superbowl party. Given that my parents met and married in Pittsburgh, I rooted for the Steelers and was thus richly rewarded. At one point Opie decided to go shirtless, which (of course, right?) prompted his father to paint his torso with a giant letter S (vaguely visible in the video).
*Thank you for understanding my need to post somber haiku. As Amy so rightly pointed out, this stuff has to come out in bits and pieces and that’s what blogs are for.
If you ever tire of it and want the more cheerful version of me, you can always read my Family Fitness blog. Just so’s you know.
Hands down, the game my family is most obsessed with plays most often is Scrabble. I’m not even sure when this habit got started, but anytime my brother, sister, and I are together it is ALL ABOUT the Scrab. Being the Word Girl in the family, I assumed I would have a natural advantage, but that is not the case. My brother, the visual artist (and in recent years, his wife–another artist) is the undisputed champ. I talked him up so much that two years ago, one of our neighbors came over on Christmas Eve for a game just to see Steve in action (and got his butt kicked for his trouble).
brought a travel Scrabble set on their month-long camping honeymoon and played nightly
keep track of all the games they play on a spreadsheet. Data gathered includes total points scored, who played the Q and Z, any bingos, and probably more obscure information too.
I still play against them. But I go into it knowing that if I come within 50 points of their scores, I’ve done really well.
We also do have an alternate game in case we are all tired of getting clobbered. Syzygy is a fast-paced, board-free version of Scrabble. Each player creates her own grid of interlocking words using letter tiles. You start with 9 tiles, and when you’ve used them all you call “Draw!” and all players must grab another. You then continue to incorporate these new letters into your crossword; you are free to change anything you’ve already put down. The game is over when all the tiles are gone and one player has a complete crossword with no leftover tiles. (And then, half the fun is checking everyone’s work and arguing about the liberties they’ve taken with the English language.)
(Gift tip: If you’re shopping for someone Scrabble-obsessed, they must read Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis. Both a fascinating character study and a how-to manual for Scrabble nerds.)
If you smelled blog blast on this one, bingo! (50 points to you.) Post yours by midnight tonight and you could win a fat pile of fun video games from EA.
Another lesson learned from BlogHer: Next time line up some posts for the following week. I have been staying up a few extra hours each night trying to catch up. Still not there yet. It didn’t help that my son dragged me into his room at 2 a.m. last night and I spent the rest of the night in his bed. And dreamed about Twitter.
