All Buttoned Up

On last Saturday morning, when I was the only human awake in the house, I plunked myself down in front of my computer with my coffee.  I was eating marshmallows for breakfast -- hey, they were leftovers from the "bomb fire" we threw last week.  Isn't it in the Mommy Contract that all mommies must eat leftovers?

I check facebook.  I check my parenting message boards.  I check my blog (no comments, rats!).  Then I think to check my blog's email -- you know, the one I created after I bought my domain name and gave an impossibly hard to remember password to?  Yeah that one.

What was waiting for me?  A notification that I was a finalist for a contest that I was pretty sure I hadn't entered.  Oh, sure, I have heard of Parent and Child Magazine.  And I order from Scholastic every book order.  But what was this?  A scam?  A practical joke?  I had no idea.  None.

My first instinct is to find out what "the girls" say (not my boobs, they usually remain silent), so I drop by the eerily quiet parenting forums I frequent.  But wait, it's 7:00 o'clock on a Saturday and the regular crowd isn't shuffling in.  No one can tell me if the Scholastic contest is a scam because they are either sleeping or out and about for weekend activities, clearly ignoring my all-consuming dilemma.

Maybe it's one of those awards that everyone wins?  Will I look like an absolute doof posting the button to my blog?  Will the seasoned mommy bloggers point and giggle behind their screens?  Well, OK, there aren't that many seasoned mommy bloggers that read my blog.  Maybe two?  I'd better not say numbers lest I alienate a follower.

I Google the author of the email and she comes up listed in seventy-bazillion places with the job she says she has in her email, so I decide that if someone were trying to scam me, they surely wouldn't have gone to the trouble of setting up THAT many secondary links.  Especially for an email which wasn't asking me for money, a blood donation, or my used socks.  That makes me far less paranoid -- I'm not gonna hole up in my cabin with a shotgun, wearing a tinfoil hat over this.

I ramble over to facebook where a friend cops to nominating me for this award, so thank you dear far-away friend for cheering me up -- you have no idea how much I needed this!

So I decide to post the button.  And see what comes of it.  Maybe someone will stop by and laugh at me for posting it, but there's a greater chance that someone will stop by and laugh with me because I posted it.  So as long as no one laughs milk through their nose and onto my keyboard, we'll be good to go!

 

Plantin' in the Dark

So this is how my blog is described over at Scholastic: A dose of Midwestern scarcasm from a mom trying to get healthy while raising two children

Didja notice the typo?  Or maybe it's not a typo...  Maybe I am super-scary.  My kids DO look at me like I have three heads sometimes.  And, for some reason, I intimidate a couple of my hubby's cousins so much that they won't talk to me.   Right now, my fingernails are kinda long, so they could be mistaken for talons.  And my hair is normally VERY scary -- wavy and windblown on the mildest of days.

It's OK, though.  I won't let the notoriety go to my head.  You ain't gonna change me, maaaan!

I am admitting to checking out the competition.  And following them.  Some competitor I am...
Dadcentric is huge.  And male.  And it might be hairier than I am.  Maybe.
The Adventures of Bean and Goobs reads like my bloggy twin.  Except that her kids are a smidge younger than mine and they're both boys.

To turn back towards me (hello, spotlight!) for a moment I'm going to share some of the misadventures of the last 10 hours:
Scott and I split a bottle of wine and watched the Lost series finale.  You may have caught my mid-broadcast tweets.  Though I wanted to, I did not chuck a shoe at the screen.  We did, however, grab a couple of lanterns and head out into the dark of the back yard to plant our blue spruce fingerlings. 

"You and me goin' plantin' in the dark..."  Hey!  I'm not using that as a euphemism -- still mid-miscarriage here, OK?  But yeah, there we were, stumbling around the yard, inhaling far too many gnats to consider it a coincidence, planting the 9 free trees my mother got from the Arbor Day Foundation.  Don't worry, I did clip the baby monitor to the front of the wheelbarrow, so if the kids needed us, we could have rushed back into the house, leaving a trail of topsoil behind us. 

This morning, I discovered that the crazy mutts have perfected a new trick:  one poops on the floor, the other eats it to clean up the evidence.  Might have worked had the snacker not stepped in it before dining.  I can just picture the two of them pulling off this caper.  No, on second thought, I don't want to picture that. 

Don't say I didn't warn you -- there is a disclaimer right there under my picture that says I might be talking about poop.  It's not even in fine print...