Three's Not a Crowd

Three coordinating wallets...

Three matching "Hi Maintenance" manicures...

And at 8am on Sunday morning, when Holly called me to come and snuggle with her and Izzy in Izzy's bed, not only was it a wild fantasy of my husband's, I can assure you, cozied up with my two besties, college roommates, girls with whom I have shared good times and bad, it was more of a divine trinity than a crowd.

xo

K.Rabs on Crabs

Stop me if you heard this...Lisa, this means you.

Just when I thought the hermit crab situation couldn't get any worse, it did. On my recent trip to the Garden State, I arrived to find that I neglected to bring dog food with me nor was there any in the pantry, so I had to head out to a local pet store. And when I say local, I mean super schwa, smelly, dark grossness that I will never be able to erase from my memory...therefore, I must share the experience with all of you.

I wasn't even in the door when Joe PetStore Worker wanted to help. He was an enigma of sorts to me, a little punk, a little petshop, and a whole lotta gay. In writing it doesn't seem so weird, but in person it truly added to the bizarreness of the entire experience. As Joe PetStore Worker led me to the dog food and carried it back to the register for me (the thing weighed all of four pounds), he asked if there was anything else that I needed.

"Well, Joe, what do ya know about hermit crabs?" I proceeded to tell him how Crawlie crawled under the sand over a week ago and has yet to reappear. "Can they go a week without food, Joey?" "Is he dead, Joe?"

"Well," he pondered, "Have you sprayed the tank with water? Hermit crabs like high humidity. Also, you may want to dig the hermit crab up (to make sure he is alive) and spray his 'gills' with water to clean them out."

I politely responded (because those of you who know me, know just how polite I can me), "Everything you just said is gross, and I won't be doing any of it. What else ya got?"

Somehow this conversation quickly left hermit crabs and led to Joe's collection of tarantulas, the female one being poisonous, the crickets he feeds them and how it isn't a problem if they get out because he has a cat, and a friend's hissing cockroaches, that she keeps as both pets and pet food.

Again, I "politely" told him I thought the hermit crabs were the grossest, he trumped that, and that I had to leave to vomit." That isn't a direct quote, but it's close enough.

And Crawlie still hasn't surfaced, just thought you should know, two weeks and counting. Stay tuned for the Crawlie Memorial Blog...

My Life Cast as Willy Wonka

Tonight Dan wanted to convince me that we should go out to dinner. I can cook, but really, I don't need any convincing for someone else to do it for me.

Natalie tried two, not one, two new things at dinner and liked them both. Neither Dan nor I told her that our chicken taquitos came out as steak taquitos; she thought they were awesome. And if she were a kid that ate any and everything, I would have divulged such information, but like her father, she likes what she likes, so we let her to believe they were chicken.

The bro on the other hand, well, that kid will eat any and everything that you put in front of him. Seriously, I don't even think he cares whether or not it is food. Tonight I placed some deliciously marinated pork on a fork and he grabbed the whole thing from me, just as Augustus Gloop does the microphone in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

"How do you feel about that Bro?"

"Very hungry." said in an Austrian accent if he had any words.

This led me to look at my happy little family and cast them in this classic film. Dan, fer sure, is Willy Wonka. He provides each of us with an equivocated sense of happiness. If only he had a giant factory that was actually full of trees that fruited ginormous gummy bears...listen I have a great man, but that, oh, that, would be tremendous.

Natalie is a little piece of all the characters. One part sincere, beloved Charlie Bucket, the apple of Wonka's eye, one part Veruca Salt, the spoiled girl who indeed gets all that her heart desires, one part Violet Beauregard, lover of gum and candy, one part Mike Teevee, does that really need an explanation?

I am torn, I am part Oompa Loompah, aiding Willy Wonka in that nasty realities of day to day, one part Charlie Bucket's mother, stirring laundry with my giant wooden spoon, making mush, and don't think I have sung "Cheer Up, Charlie" in this house on more than one occasion, and four parts all the other enabling parents that accompany their children to the famed chocolate factory.

Hermie and Crawlie

Natalie used to have imaginary friends, Nomie and Sogee. They had their own voices, their own house in town that we passed regularly and Natalie would point out, and they would come to play, stay for dinner, and cause all sorts of trouble - mostly Sogee, he was a real troublemaker. On many occasions I told Natalie that I didn't think that Sogee would be allowed to come over and play anymore.

Sometimes I miss Nomie and Sogee or at least the way Natalie would pretend to be them and change her voice without missing a beat.

I went to pick her up from school one day, and she ran to me with wide eyes, "Mommy, can we take Hermie and Crawlie for the summer!?!" I couldn't find it in my heart to crush her genuine excitement, even though I had no idea what she was talking about.

I came to learn that Hermie and Crawlie are hermit crabs. I never had hermit crabs as a kid, nor do I remember ever wanting for one. But we are now the proud babysitters of two hermit crabs. Hermie is a big guy who is pretty active. The bro and I sat watching him drink? bathe? for a full fifteen minutes. I was both enraptured and disgusted by it. The bro loved every minute. Hermie then proceeded to start digging. When we returned later in the day he wasn't on his side of the tank, and I went into a mild panic wondering how this creature would be able to get out. I dared to stick my hand in there and found that he had burrowed himself into the sand under his water dish. Crawlie on the other hand is truly a hermit. He hangs out in his "Crawlie Cave" all day, and I have to check every so often to make sure he is still alive. Just what I need, a dead hermit crab. AND, they don't like each other, so there is a makeshift cardboard divider. I may have to beautify that.

This is what you need to know about hermit crabs:

1. They are kind of gross. Little rat, spider animals that live in a shell, and their little legs and antennae come out and I get the hebgebees. Yuck.

2. They are apparently a tad nocturnal and will tap on the glass at night, so keep them somewhere where no one sleeps.

3. Tap water will kill them. That's right, we have private school hermit crabs who can only drink bottled water.

4. I think these will be the first and last class pets we take for the summer.

Curious Kristen

This is Kristen.

She lives with Dan the Man, Nattie G. and Joe Joe the Bro Bro.

Kristen is very curious. After reading "Curious George goes to the Hospital" for, seriously, the 900th time, she still doesn't understand why the Man with the Yellow Hat doesn't take George to the vet. Furthermore, Kristen is very curious that no other medical professional at the hospital or the mayor, who is visiting, for that matter questions why there is a monkey causing so much mayhem in said hospital.

Also, Kristen is very curious why the Man with the Yellow Hat also has to wear a yellow outfit all the time. I mean, he is called the Man with the Yellow Hat, not the Man with the Yellow Ensemble. And how does this man get away with taking a monkey to all of these places: the hospital, the candy factory, the pancake breakfast, George is not a helper monkey, he is just a plain old, captured from his native habitat in a canvas bag monkey.

Kristen is curious to know if the Curious George collection is on the challenged or banned book lists anywhere, because in 2010, Kristen doesn't think that Margaret or H.A. Rey would be the acclaimed and beloved author/illustrators they are today.

I Can See the Light

The truth is, I am too tired to be witty tonight. I am overwhelmed and inundated with prizes for Natalie's end of the year carnival. Dan's office is FULL to the brim with junk that families at Oak Meadow no longer want and wish some other lucky family to to house. At the moment, it is my house. Last night, I spent over an our cutting out letters and gluing them to neon colored posters for our Children's House Prize Table only to ruin three of the five of them this morning - a morning that didn't seem to want to end- and ultimately just had to print boring 8.5x11.5 computer paper print outs because they needed to get to school to be laminated for said carnival.

But tomorrow is date night, and Dan and I are headed to a new tapas restaurant AND I have this fabulous little mosaic of cuteness to share with y'all. Stay tuned for an upcoming fashion show starring my very own Miss Natalie - Betsey Johnson and Patricia Field got nothin' on her!

Jammin

So very many barbecues this weekend yielded, two beer can chickens, three racks of ribs, two and a half pounds of salmon, tomato salad, spinach salad, coleslaw, apple pie, frozen key lime pie, summer challah pudding, and a leftover two pounds of strawberries.

My little family can do a number on fresh fruit, but we were full and I awoke this morning to see that these gorgeous red berries were quickly turning on them. I decided that this was a sign that it was time to learn how to make jam.

I thought for sure this was going to be an arduous process-- something that Ma would do on Little House on the Prairie over the open fire. I had resigned myself to the fact that I would get nothing else done today because making jam would surely take hours upon hours.

...but it didn't. It was so quick and so easy. Honestly, the worst part of the process was sterilizing the mason jar, and Pa came in and did that for me, all while we relished in how we could live off the land, and I could start to churn my own butter. Truly, this was the conversation we had.

Then, on the way home from storytime, I noticed that our local farm is open for strawberry picking, so now I can use locally grown strawberries, can, store, and gift them, like Diane Keaton in Baby Boom! (yes I know that was applesauce, but you get what I mean.)

And Karyn dared to suggest I just make smoothies...bah!