Ian: Mommy, why aren’t you moving? (please note, this was said with as much dismay as you or I would express over someone who was actually bleeding from an orifice or three)
Me: sorry, I didn’t realize there was actually a rule against me holding still.
Michael: There isn’t. It’s just so unusual…
Where did you find those glasses?!?
Have you ever thought to yourself, “you know, what I really need right here is a little dresser?” And then, the very next day, you were driving through your neighborhood, and you saw the perfect thing, sitting at the curb? ME TOO! I’d been wishing I had a low piece with drawers for the study during my massive organizational overhaul (I know, I do this way too much) and then, on my way home from dropping Ian off at preschool, THERE IT WAS. It’s painted black, and where the paint is distressed you can tell it used to be red. It was even remarkably clean for something that was sitting out by the street.
I actually made a fool of myself trying to figure out whether I could get it into the car by myself. (NO WAY.) For one thing, I’d forgotten how much stuff I had in the trunk. For another, if I could have put the back seat down it MIGHT have fit, but we’re talking car seats here, people, so it was a no go.
Mind you, my brother would have known instantly that it was never gonna fit. I’ve seen him putting leftovers away. He has this spatial awareness thing at “knack” level. Seriously, invite him over to load your dishwasher sometime.
So, when I got tired of waving drivers around me, I threw the drawers in the back, since I knew I’d have to get the stroller out of the baby’s car seat once he was sitting in it, and this way I was spared the embarrassment of asking the baby to hold one of the drawers on his way home. Then, I went and found some help.
This is how I know Michael really loves me… he puts up with things like this. We had to wave a lot more cars around us while we were busy putting it on the roof rack (I don’t know what was up with all the traffic in the middle of a Tuesday. Where do you think they were all going? The mind boggles.) and then we fled the scene. We even took an alternate route home so none of our gawkers would follow us.
It really was quite a remarkable find… not only was it my favorite price (FREE) it tidies the room right up, because everything fits in it “just so.”
Yesterday my site was sporting this message:
Good thing I have backups or this story could have taken quite the narrative turn…
My FORMER ISP has always had an absolutely terrible service process. I chose them six years ago because… well, honestly I have no idea why. It may have been a very low-involvement decision. This morning when I discovered the problem, things went like this around here:
Michael: Wait, what site is this? Is it (free service I use for something else)?
Me: No, no, it’s my ISP, you know, the one we pay for.
Michael: Have you called them?
Me: No. They do not have a support phone number. How this works is, you open a ticket and wait for them to email you. Then you send a response and wait for them to email you some more.
Michael: What?
Me: Yes, they suck. We need a new one.
The problem with ANY online help desk is that you send in your request in what you THINK is perfectly plain language, and then they respond with a question you think you’ve already provided the answer to, and then, five hours later, they respond to YOUR response with something so vauge you have to do four Google searches just to find out what they are talking about.
But NO MORE. Now I’m hosting with hostgator, where they have 24 hour LIVE support, so I can skip the five hour wait and go straight to Googling. And no, they totally aren’t paying me to say this.
So last night I had this dream. Yes, I know a lot of stories that start this way are boring, but humor me.
In this dream, my friend Julie called to say that her firm had tickets to something or other with Daniel Craig, and would we like to go. Thinking I was saying yes to movie tickets, I enthusiastically agreed that yes, we’d LOVE to go. She said she’d meet us there, so we all piled into the car, because for some reason we really had decided to take the kids to something that would doubtless be completely inappropriate for them. Which is all cool because this is a dream, and, unlike all the Reese’s I ate yesterday, this bad decision won’t be coming back to haunt me.
We get there and find out that this is really a VERY fancy theater and I’m starting to be impressed when I realize Julie’s face is on all the marketing materials, and I remember that she’s started her own, obviously quite successful, firm. And as she’s telling me how uncomfortable it makes her to see her own face plastered everywhere and how ridiculous she thinks it is that some famous person designed and named a color after her, I am overhearing someone in the hallway or an adjacent room repeatedly asking people if they’d like to see Daniel Craig.
I laughed and asked Julie, “Well, who WOULDN’T want to see Daniel Craig,” because I think this is a really good question. And she thinks that’s very funny and wants to know if I’m one of those crazy stalker type fans, which is DEFINITELY a good question since, as we all know, I’m prone to enthusiasms.
I explain that I prefer to enjoy the public personae created by celebrities and how knowing too much about them can spoil it, and I wouldn’t want to name names but, for instance, let’s talk about Christian Slater.
So then someone official comes and is recruiting kids for an activity. And Michael takes Ian, who is wearing his Halloween costume, and I keep Keeghan with me, where he is no doubt enjoying my continued thoughts on The Hotness of Daniel Craig, which Julie is finding funnier and funnier. Until the curtain opens and I find out this is not a movie but a play, and that Ian’s going to be in it, which we all know would be a horrible idea, unless he’s a T-Rex, in which case he’ll be brilliant.
I look around me and see a lot of empty seats, formerly occupied by members of the cast. Which is when it dawns on me that Julie is so amused because Daniel Craig has been sitting behind me the entire time I’ve been discussing my Male Hotness Paradigm, which petty much goes: 1. Michael 2. Daniel Craig 3. Everyone Else.
At this point I was Rudely Awakened by One of My Children, but we can take a few things away from this. For instance, of all my friends, my subconscious picked Julie as most likely to have a color named after her and be acquainted with movie stars. Also, that I should look behind me now and then, even in dreams. Last, and far from least, I should stay away from Reese’s if I’m serious about Project Hold The Line.
My reaction to this:
Made Ian look at the expression on my face and ask why his father and I are married. Because move over, Daniel Craig, that’s why.
