I'm here again, taking a break from licking the cupcake batter on the eve of Hosea's 5th birthday. I know I know, you shouldn't eat cake batter that has eggs in it. I take chances sometimes. Usually things work out. It's common to feel nostalgic on birthdays isn't it? Some people, more than others, feel this way. I know today when Hosea was saying to me, "Mama, you 39, next you gonna be 40" and I was saying, "Yes, let's not speak of it" well, the whole birthday thing was getting to me. And I have many more months to go! For a kid, though, having a birthday doesn't usually have that kind of baggage yet. Tomorrow Hosea can no longer tell people, "I'm 4 and a half, almost 5" when they ask him how old he is. He can simply say, "I'm 5"! (We'll see, he might have to start adding days to that, given his whole obsession with numbers happening right now!). Of course, a parent is gonna feel that nostalgia when t...

The other day Greta exclaimed proudly, "Oh! That's a great quote. I'm gonna write that one down!"...about something she'd just said. (Was I proud at that moment? Yes. Was I amused? YES!) What was it she said, you wonder? "It's not the wrong way if it's working."  Apparently she had just said this to Therese, in defense of something probably. And then she felt quite impressed by herself. This got her thinking...hmm maybe I can come up with some more quotes! Next was, "Negativity is just a word, and like all words we can choose to use it or not use it." When she read that one out loud she sounded a bit like she was sarcastically impersonating a teacher or something. "I'm coming up with quotes," she told Hosea, as she sat at the table to write them down, to which he quickly responded with, "Chicken nugget!", "Oh, gooooooooood one!" we both told him, laughing. Aside from the card she made for her st...

For Valentine's Day, I'm going to post some poems on love, romantic love--of course, in all its variations. It's light, like a decorated brown bag of valentines! Taped lollipops, cute faces, smiles, laughter! It's heavy, like a hallway full of memories. Like waiting, wanting. It's here for us all,  it comes for us all, whether we like it or not. And now...that meager 2019 poem by me (ha!), will be followed by poems that have and will stand the test of time: from the 15th century to the 21st century. Did you get chocolates today? A love card? Lots of kisses and hugs? Did you watch a silly romantic movie by yourself and drink wine? Did you rage-fully ruminate on past wrongs? Did you pine away after someone...mostly in your mind, maybe in your actions? Did you forget it was even Valentine's Day? Well, it's time for some poetry! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- sometimes i stop myself lfrom saying the wo...

"Good dog, Nutmeg!" "Schnitzel, come here!" "That's right, Nutmeg, stack the papers that way." Both dogs obediently wear their name tags too--on their foreheads, no less. Bright yellow circles, with their names, taped on. As this charade carried on my man S almost forgot he had the label on him! "Who's Schnitzel?" I said to him, really confused at one point, then, "...Oh!! That's right. Good dog, Schnitzel." This is how some of our last Saturday went. This part in particular was during chores time. That beloved time on many people's Saturdays when we get sh-- done! Right? This time we did the whole "play first, work later" thing, you know, to change it up a bit. We went to a birthday party first. And the kids got hopped up on sugar. And then we all came home to do some chores before I sent those kids off to their dad's house (hopped up on sugar! sorry M&M!) My eldest, maybe because she was hopped u...