I have to try and make this brief because i want to treadmill it before I start the day. That's right, I prefer to use the treadmill in the air-conditioning with the fan blowing as opposed to being swarmed by gnats and breathing in humid air and wheezing because someone is mowing their grass. Deal with it.

Sometimes when one sends out invitations over a month in advance and includes self-addressed stamped envelopes in which the recipient can rsvp, it is not only normal, but EXPECTED that one write yay or nay and drop said envelope in the mail. Do you need me to fill it out for you, too? Common courtesy people. Sheesh. Breakdown of human civilization. Assholes.

But on the positive side, our fox is alive and well and leaving half-eaten apples strewn about the yard. I may not have told you that I saw a dead fox on a nearby back road and was concerned that it was ours. But apparently it was someone else's.

In the immortal words of Merle Streep, that's all.

Do you know what sucks (besides wasp nests under the sliding board and oregano that won't grow)? The Complete Idiot's Guide to Raising Boys.

Periodically I like to torture myself by reading a myriad of how-to books regarding child rearing. Sometimes they are helpful in reminding me to be fully present and in the moment with my child when I'm with him, and not thinking of what I have to buy at the grocery store for dinner or when the next season of Project Runway will begin. Sometimes I glean insight as to why time-outs aren't always working (because I'm doing them incorrectly and not using consistency and/or first giving a warning and allowing my child time to correct his own behavior) or that using a calm voice of explanation can go a lot further than screeching. Thanks, Super Nanny!

And sometimes, like the Complete Idiot book, they remind me that common sense and unconditional love will always triumph over regurgitating old stereotypes and passing them off as truth. Boys aren't verbal! Boys don't like to read! Boys just want to run around and whack things with sticks! Boys want to marry their mothers and kill their fathers! 

DUDE. Thank God the husband and wife team who penned the book do not live anywhere near me, so my child will not be interacting with their freaks. Plus, they named one of their kids Bjorn. Had I seen that, I would never have even picked-up the book.

"Look," said I as the tiny puffs of white silk drifted through the lazy sunshine, "our entire yard is filled with wishes."

Do you know about wishes, aka some type of seed, not exactly unlike dandelion seeds, but not exactly like them either? Or was that just in my family? We always called them wishes and I've spent my life catching them, making a wish and releasing them into the breeze. I recently passed that bit of lore onto Mort, who was immediately skeptical and asked if his wishes would really come true. I'd love to know what he wished for and make it happen. Unless it was something involving dragons and pirates and sharks and tornadoes and ghosts. Which it probably was.

Anyway, a friend had stopped by as I was admiring the wishes drifting around our yard and she located the abundant source of them and screwed-up her face, "Uh, I hate to tell you this, but those are thistles."

And thus ended any speculation about the source of the spiky weed things that have infiltrated my garden like a million blades of grass that I can spend hours removing and have an entire new crop growing within 4 days.

My garden is so so terrible this year. I've spent more time and money and care and work than all the other years combined and even discounting the rabbits and the thistles, it is horrid. Things that I usually am pawning off on every passer-by because my garden is overflowing? (Hey there! I see you're out on a walk this morning! Would you like some basil/green peppers/jalapenos/tomatoes/ to enjoy as you exercise?) Pitiful. I have planted oregano 6 times. And it refuses to do anything but die. My basil is already going to seed. Spinach and arugula and broccoli rabe went right to seed. My peppers are refusing to grow larger than the size of the palm of my hand. My lettuce is bitter. My broccoli is dinky. Although on the positive, this year's grape tomatoes taste like sunshine on a vine. And I just may have ears of corn as I didn't mistakenly pull it this year thinking it was grass.

Don't you just hate conflicting weather reports? Like when you are supposed to spend the day at a friend's pool and the newspaper is calling for heavy thunderstorms but weather.com is listing 0 chance of precipitation. Who are you to believe? probably whichever one is predicting the weather you would most like to see.

Who  doesn't love having a friend that steps outside, collects some eggs and delivers them to your house so that you can make French toast?

BTW, I saw no evidence of the French horking down French toast in France. I did, however, see them carrying baguettes and muttering about stinky cheese.

As I am always complaining about my lack of sleep, I give mad props to the Sandman because I slept from 9 t0 6 last night and I feel like I could leap tall buildings in a single bound.

We took an impromptu family day to an amusement park and I realized that had I any doubts prior, I am officially on the other side of old. My first clue was when I spotted a guy with a full-on, proper 1978 mohawk, complete with individual two-foot spikes and shaved head. And I thought he looked like a little boy trying to play tough dress-up. And I also thought it was an impractical hair-do for getting on rides. A mere 20 years ago, I would have followed him all around the park thinking he was the bee's knees. Although he probably wasn't even a twinkle in his mama's eye 20 years ago.

My second clue was getting dizzy on the Tilt-a-whirl of all things. Didn't I used to feel that the more loops and swirls a ride had the better it would be? Who can't take the Tilt-a-whirl? Old people with inner ear issues, that's who.

Oh, and  I worried that my sunblock was wearing off and  I  actually watched the shows. Yep. Nothing says "old" like watching a bunch of amusement park wanna-be- Broadway-stars' rendition of "YMCA". Although if singing and dancing is your thing and you are in college or high school(?), wouldn't that be a great summer job? Way better than working at Long John Silver's.

I am taking a break from cleaning because it's dusting time and I surely hate dusting. it's pointless. It's annoying. It makes me wheeze. And by the time you're done, there's dust again.

Hey, I thought, I will just pop onto the computer for a minute and see if I have any more editing work awaiting my attention in my inbox. And I didn't. So, then I wasted some time looking at classes and other freelance jobs and trying to prepare for life as a full-time stay-at-home mom when my child is no longer at home full-time.

Also, I went to a party yesterday and totally fell-off the diet wagon. I resisted the cake. But I did not resist the margaritas. Mort and I split an extra-lean turkey burger with no bun and I had about 23 tortilla chips. I'm not getting on the scale today. Anyhoo, see how I'm not dusting? But I did clean the toilets as penance for my margaritas and tortillas.

"What?" Mort just yelled.

"I didn't say anything," I replied.

"Oh. It smells like marshmallows." And then he disappeared back into his world of whatever it is he's doing. See, how can anything else I do for the rest of my life compete with that?!? What job could I possibly have where someone says things like that? And don't roll your eyes and think, DUH! Any job with kids. Because I don't like kids. Unless they belong to me or people I love. Or are really really cute.

Hey, so today is day 4 of the diet and i have lost 3 and a half pounds. I guess how can you not lose weight when you go from eating any old horrible thing you want in ridiculous quantities and no moderation to three days of eating only gigantic bowls of fruits and vegetables with the occasional baked potato and meat ?

With any luck,by the end of day 7, my sweet tooth will be calmed and my processed food addiction will be broken. I don't know how I lost my way so drastically. I used to be such a  smart and healthy eater. Even if I had a slice of pizza, I would put a handful of spinach leaves on top of it. Although I think new eating patterns take 3 weeks to become ingrained. Well, maybe this will be a good jumping point to make healthier choices.

I like bangs. I think they look sharp. Duke, however, truly hates bangs. And it's hard to do something to yourself when you know your partner wouldn't like it even if Angelina Jolie (or whoever is the latest hot chick. Insert name here. I'm not up on this stuff. I'm still mourning the break-up of Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt. Sigh.)sported them. It's not that I couldn't cut bangs. It's just that I know it would be the equivalent of Duke shaving his sideburns above his ears so that the white of his skin showed. And maybe letting his hair touch his collar in the back but be closely cropped in the front. I wouldn't love him any less, but I would wonder why he would do that to himself every time I looked at him. So, Duke, if you secretly long for the haircut, those are my feelings!

My garden needs some tlc before it leaps into uncontrollable territory again. I could clean up the weeds and replace the fence and thin out the crop and get it under control again in a couple of hours or so. However, I'm in slo-mo. No sleep. Again and again and again. Duke thinks I should hit up our friendly neighborhood doctor and check out their views on prescription relief. The problem with that being that I have tried that in the past and they have two effects on me: I cannot wake-up the next day and/or they do not help me to sleep and make me feel drugged and hungover.

I've tried herbal remedies, I've tried chemical remedies, I've tried old folk tales, oh, I think I've tried everything. I think the only time in my life that I slept well and deeply was in the first trimester of my pregnancy where I slept every time I stopped moving.

I fell asleep on the couch around 5 am and awoke to Stella doing her morning yoga and Mort quietly slipping his freezing feet against my legs under my quilt. There was an apple on the table beside me that Mort had taken from the fruit bowl and washed and dried for me to eat when I woke-up.

Have you ever tried the cabbage soup diet? Good Lord that thing is specific. I'm a bit desperate as I am in a wedding in a little over two weeks and I'm still 7 pounds from fitting into my clothes. Mainly because I've gotten in the habit of eating whatever I want, whenever I want, in whatever quantity I want and not exercising. Ugh. Wish me luck.

I was lawn chairing (and yes, lawn chairing is a verb when used in the sense that you sit for .07 seconds before leaping up to get someone a drink of water, rescue someone from the monkey bars, find someone the purple shovel, NO not THAT purple shovel!) it with a friend yesterday while we watched our offspring and various neighbor kids tear throught the obstacle course she had constructed for them. (Isn't that genius? An obstacle course. Keep them focused and moving.) And she told me about a website called True Mom Confessions where moms get to spill their deep dark mommy secrets.

 It reminds me of that book where someone had handed out note cards and asked people to write their secret and mail it to the author. Do you remember that book? I could only read so much of it as it was really too painful and depressing and voyeuristic. 

However, that didn't stop me from checking out this site. And for the most part it seemed like sitting amongst a bunch of moms. Except for the couple of people who wrote in to share their secret that they read that site because it made them feel so fortunate to  be themselves with their great lives and not be the moms who wrote in with complaints.

And that just seemed mean. If moms are posting on this site because they want to get something off their chest without being judged or whatever, do they need other moms telling them how superior their lives are comparatively? I think the case in this site is if you don't have anything complain-y to say, don't say anything at all.

If your son is mean to a kid who was mean to him first AND is a mean little kid in general, does it count? A question for the ages, like a falling tree in the forest or the chicken and the egg.

Oh, alright, get off your high horse. I know it's still wrong. 

I can hear that Mort is watching something wholly inappropriate on the television but I am too tired to check it out. I sure hope it's not another Michael Jackson introspective.

With the trouble I'm having waking up in the am, pretty soon I will become one of those people who are incapable of speech until two coffees in. Actually, I'm pretty much that person right now. 

So, I now know what a $17 beer takes like. I give it an "eh". I wouldn't drink it again. there was a $45 beer on the menu and I was very tempted to order it. Because why in the world would a beer cost that much? It has to be crazy, right? But that was too ridiculous, even for me. And if I lived in Belgium, I would probably be very hungry. You can only eat so many waffles. 

I am dogsitting for a friend that got stuck at the last minute. The place where her family was going on vacation assured them that it was pet-friendly and dogs were welcome. And then she found out that wasn't true.

So as she has a lovely, waggly puppy with a super sweet disposition, I was happy to host him. And he's been great. No accidents. Chewing appropriately on nylabones. Lots of kisses. Complete deferrance and submission to Stella.

And Stella....well, she's being a bit of a jerk. Talk about a cranky old lady. Jeesh.

Good times.

I'll preface this by saying I woke-up promptly at 4 am and I have a horrid allergy induced headache because I forgot to take my allergy meds yesterday. However, I was very vocal about this last night, so my opinion stands and is not a result of crankiness.

WHO CARES THAT MICHAEL JACKSON AND FARRAH FAWCET DIED?!?!? Seriously. Did you know them? Were they your close, personal friends? Were you related to them? What's the hubbub? Yeesh. I get feeling a small pang at the news that someone died and saying, "That's a shame." But really, does every headline need to be about this? There's nothing more pressing going on in our country? Does every channel need to be interrupted to bring you this breaking news and have cobbled together shows on these people? 

For the record, yes, I grew-up with a Michael Jackson poster on my wall. (The one with the yellow sweater vest during the Thriller years.) I saw him in concert. I even made my own sequined glove to wear. I still have Wanna Be Starting Something on my i-pod. And I'm just not interested in his death. I DON'T KNOW HIM.

What I am interested in and I feel would be a much greater way to spend one's time is discovering what exactly Danielle tried to have someone do to Dina. That should be on every channel.

Disgruntled. Such a stereotypical Monday. Awoke to the sound of a quilt being dragged down the stairs. Told said quilt-dragger to go back to bed. He refused. Argument ensued. No hope of returning to much needed sleep. I slept from 11:30 pm to 1:30 am on Saturday night. And that was it. Not even sure yesterday was real. I almost feel that Andy Rooney made sense in his column? But that can't have happened, right?

I'm buying ladybugs today. Next year I will know to proactively plant lady beetle friendly items that make them feel warm and welcome to eat aphids in the garden. Soap spray doesn't seem to be working. Maybe because it's eco-friendly soap? 

Also need to do the latest post-strep scrub down of the house. I don't know why I bother. It's not like it has worked the other two times. The only family member who hasn't gotten it is Stella and she's hopping along on three paws and a bandaged foot that she refuses to allow to touch the floor. So she probably has strep throat of the paw.

If the plants in your terrarium are growing so quickly they soon will be unable to remain in your terrarium, does that mean you have done something wrong? Aren't terrariums supposed to last anywhere from 1970 on?

Dude, I have pretty much had it with today and it's not even 8:30.

And this year's organic gardening grossness trophy (currently held by last year's winner, the tomato hornworm) will be taken by the aphids and their disgusting ant puppeteers. Whilst checking upon how my garden fared while I was away, and marvelling at the way my weeds are thriving, I noticed yucky little black things and ants on my strawberry plants. In and of itself, not nearly the ball of gag reflex that the tomato horn worm is. Until I looked up how to rid my garden of them in a safe way. (For the record, a dish soap and water mix and/or lady bugs--you can call them Miss Beetle if you're nasty.)

And thus discovered that the ants harvest  and ingest some secretion produced by said  aphids and do their damnest to protect them from predators and even go so far as to safely carry them into their ant dens and then return them to the plant. I found websites describing the ants as "milkers" as the aphids are their own personal herd of dairy cows. OH MY GOD.

Even while part of me secretly marvels at this amazing feat of the insect world and the symbiotic relationship unfolding amongst my strawberries, another part of me really wishes they all just still looked like ants running amok amongst little black dots. Because knowing that those ants are milking those aphids makes me want to hurl.

Last year I returned home from a trip to the beach with my wonderful friends and all our offspring with a sinus infection (me) and a double ear infection(Mort). This year's trip has commenced with a case of strep throat (Mort). I'm sensing a theme.

And one other interesting tidbit from vacation. Well, it will probably be more than one. Anyhoo, when one is vacationing with their people and 73.6 childrens, there is no time for reading a newspaper and/or watching the news. We are all well caught-up on what the tabloids have had to say about the status of John and Kate and Will it Last and Maybe They Shouldn't Have Had 8 Kids and Oh My Gawd, is He Wearing Jeans With TIGERS on the Back Pockets? (Don't you love it when you rent a beach house and there are stacks and stacks of old magazines you haven't read? I LOVE that!) And we watched the season finale of The Real Housewives of New Jersey not once, but twice, whilst drinking wine and eating chocolate chip cookies.

Which brings me to my point: Um, yeah, who knew that said tubs of Nestle chocolate chip cookie dough were being recalled? Oops. Good thing we hid them form the kids so that we wouldn't have to share.

So, my car is purposefully small. I have owned it for almost a year and that has never been a problem. 

However, last year when I rented a house at the beach with my friends, I was driving an SUV. And it was filled to the gills with supplies. I have the same amount (mmm, possibly more) of stuff this year and roughly half the amount of car in which to place it.

On one hand, I am truly an expert packer. A teeny side benefit to OCD. I can make it work. Tim Gunn would be proud. Even my beloved Duke stands aside and lets me work my mojo when it comes to packing a car.

On the other hand, I'm not a miracle worker. 

This should be interesting. Will I be forced to give in and drive the other automobile? Will I surpass even my own packing prowess?

I am making salsa tonight with my first batch of garden picked cilantro. And I have a bunch 'o lettuce and spinach to take to the shore. I LOVE eating from the garden.

Meanies! I was sitting at swimming lessons (have you ever noticed that when you are a mom, an awful lot of your time is devoted to sitting and watching and driving and sitting some more?) and there were a couple of kids who were fairly hysterical at the thought of getting in the water and were panicking. The swim instructors were doing an awesome job working with them and the poor moms were doing their best to strike the right chord: do you ignore them? Do you encourage them? Are you gently stern? You have to run the gamut. Every mom has been there at one event or another, where your child has a meltdown and you have to figure out the best way to make life okay and not give-in. No one has all the answers. And kids are people, too. All we can do is help them be the best person they can be. My guess would have been that because we've all been there, everyone is pretty sympathetic to those times. For the people who look at you and announce, "SOMEONE's not happy," as your child is puddling on the floor and you are sweating bullets and trying to walk the line between being a grown-up and joining them in their wails, yes, you are not helping.

Anyway, so the woman sitting next to me at swimming looks at me and announces, "SOMEONE's not happy." I just tightly smiled and replied, "Poor little guy." Because the child is just scared/having a bad day/ tired/ none of my business. Unless a child is in danger and/or being harmed, I tend to keep my opinions to myself. At least until I can go home and write about them. It's hard enough helping your own child navigate the path of life. I'm not going to assume I can parent anyone else's child.

Of course the woman beside me continues to spout off her sour words of wisdom as to how the crying child should be dealt with, what the harried mom should be doing, how she wouldn't put up with that kind of thing,etc. And I'm sitting there thinking, "Really? Really? Are you really talking about this in such a public space? Are you that insensitive and rude and clueless?" For all she knew, I could be that child's mother/aunt/nanny. And she is spewing all these nasty negative thoughts about him all over me. And nothing I do is stopping her flow. I tried ignoring her. I tried saying, "Well, we've all been there," and "Well, I think they're doing their best." And then the heart-wrenchingly obese child (See how I slipped in my own frowning judgement on her parenting skills?)with her starts piping-up with, "Look at my pen! Look at my cut! I fell off my bike!"

This however, did prove to be a diversion as the woman then proceeded to tell me how hopeless the dangerously overweight child (?) grandson(?) with her is; how he screams when he takes swimming lessons, how he's scared to ride a bike. And the kid is nodding along in agreement. Oh man, it made my stomach hurt.

I guess it's easy to be cruel about someone else's child when you are that cruel with your own.

DUDE! You have to have your kid's back! If you don't, who will? If you don't think your child is the single greatest gift you've ever been blessed with in life, what chance does your child have? Everyone deserves to have someone wholly devoted to them, someone who thinks that at the end of the day, they are the greatest thing coming and going.

I may have moments where I sit in the safety of my friends with my head in my hands, wondering if I'm making the best choices or handling things the best way. But I wouldn't bother questioning myself and my parenting abilities if Mort's life wasn't my greatest concern.

For the record, I successfully avoided the hater and her child the next day on the bleachers. And the little kid who had been upset about swimming did an excellent job that day and was swimming around by the end of the lesson and the mom was right there with him celebrating his victory as surely as she had helped him through his crisis. I hope the judegy, mean parent was taking notes.

I have a mosquito bite on the palm of my hand. How does that happen without the owner of said hand noticing? It's really really really freaking itchy. Much itchier than the other 13 mosquito bites I collected over the weekend. (Yes, I counted.)

So, that old tale about a sensible diet and daily exercise as the key to losing weight? True. Who knew? At this rate, I very well may be able to fit into my summer clothes by July. 

I found the best headpiece on etsy. I'm hoping that my sister wants me to wear it for her wedding. I'm not sure where else I cold wear something so over the top. They are remodeling our grocery store. Maybe to the grand re-opening? 

I plucked the first non-bitten strawberry from the garden yesterday. And set it aside. And forgot about it and left it in the yard overnight. I'm guessing it's gone. I replanted my wilting herbs; discovered everyone has been having spinach issues; mixed in some mushroom compost; reinforced the entire existing fence with chicken wire and tacked it into the ground; and  got frustrated and pulled weeds with my hands. Heavier  gardener's tan than ever. It was a two shower day.

And then Duke and I split-up for the evening and watched our respective movies. His was a horror movie. Mine was a romantic comedy, He's Just Not That Into You. I thought it was cute. It made me cringe in some spots, but made me happy in others. It would have been an excellent movie to watch with my sister over chips and onion dip and cocktails and we could have clucked over the dummies.

If you aren't quite bathing suit ready, but you find one that you would be willing to wear in public, should you buy it even if you plan on it being the wrong size within a couple of weeks?

You know, I tried to buy a bathing suit at a jumbled store over the weekend. The bathing suits are sold in sets there. However, three suits were mismatched. For example: XS top, S bottom, XS top, M bottom, L top, XL bottom. Anyway, one of the mismatched suits was a good fit on me and I wanted to buy it. And the clerk wouldn't let me. "The sizes don't match. They have to match."

"I understand that, but there are three suits that are mismatched and seven that are correctly matched. The mismatched ones are not taking away from the correctly matched ones. They are just mismatched and that's the one I want."

"We can only sell the top and bottom in the same size, so you have to take a different one."

"But you have three on the rack whose sizes don't match. I want to buy one of those."

And on and on and on. And of course there was a long line of grumbling customers (which makes me feel terrible and anxious)and back-up was called to verify that I wanted to buy a mismatched suit, even though there were matched size suits available with the end result being that they would not sell me the mismatched suit. I was really bummed. And frustrated. Because it just wasn't logical and I couldn't make my point seem valid. Or maybe I didn't have a valid point.  But I honestly think the bored whippersnappers working there just didn't understand/care what I was pointing out. And I have worked enough retail to know where they're coming from. Sometimes you feel like dealing with annoying customers. Some times you don't. But what will they do with those mismatched suits? They didn't have a proper matching size and all the other suits were neatly accounted for. I just wanted to give them money in exchange for goods! I left the store empty-handed. I wanted to tell them I will never shop there again, but a) no skin off their nose and b) that would have been a big fat lie. Because I will shop there again. Maybe even today.