Menu, Week of 4/30

I know I know. It had been how long since I planned a menu? But I have excuses! M has been traveling! And we have had to use up the stash in the freezer before spring! But M is actually in town all week long, and we only have a tupperware or two of chili left, so it is time to break out the spring recipes!

Tuesday - Yogurt Marinated Lamb Kebabs

Wednesday - Shrimp and Orzo with Cherry Tomatoes and Romano Cheese

Thursday - Curried Couscous Salad with Dried Cranberries

Friday - Black Bean Salad with Lime Vinaigrette

Saturday - Cilantro Ginger Halibut

Two Firsts

Today, C finally learned to pump properly while swinging. And, today he came home from school crying for the first time because three little girls in his class had called him a loser. Two major milestones in one day, both announcing in totally different ways that my son is growing up.

The pumping I could handle. That only required cheering and encouragement on my part along with lots of hugs and high fives when he finally disembarked from the swing 20 minutes after getting onto it. The name calling bit, however, was a little out of my league.

When he could finally get out why he was crying, I stalled by asking "And what did you do?" Hoping that he would have miraculously discovered the solution all by himself. The answer, however, was "I hid under the slide until recess was over." Apparently, the teachers overheard the comments, and took the girls aside and spoke to them, which had slightly mollified C, but he was so afraid of getting his feelings hurt again that he decided to stay hidden until it was time to go home.

My initial reaction was to get on the phone to the two moms and give them a piece of my mind about the behavior of their offspring, but quickly decided that it was not in fact the right way to go about this. Instead, I spoke with C about how words can hurt as much as fists, and how it was OK to feel sad about the incident. We practiced telling any future offenders not to call him a loser, and how to tell them that they hurt his feelings. We discussed how just because other children were calling names did not mean that it was OK to do it, and how people who call you names are not really good friends.

C perked up considerably after I "gave him permission" to not play with the girls if he didn't want to, he seemed to think that just because they usually played together that it meant they had to do so for life, even if they were being mean to him. And he is pondering whether he is going to give them another chance if the apologize to him. My guess is that the girls have forgotten all about the incident, so he will be waiting an awful long time for the apology, but the exercise is probably useful. I, however, will have to restrain myself from giving the girls an ominous look tomorrow morning. Because no one should call my fabulous little boy a loser.

Look What the Cat Dragged in Part Deux

On Friday night, I woke up at 5 am or some awful hour like that to the cat door (which I had forgotten to close) slamming and then yeowling. The kind of yeowling that our cats make when chasing a mouse. In my sleep-deprived fog, I tried to convince myself that I was dreaming but then I heard the pouncing and scurrying and forced myself to turn on the lights.

Yep, there was Lazy Cat was chasing a mouse around my bedroom floor. I woke M up, went to find the gloves, came back and he had lost the mouse. Lost. The mouse. In the house. Lazy Cat thought she knew where it was but when we looked where she had staked out, she too had lost the mouse. M climbed back into bed and went to sleep, and I lay awake listening for sounds of the mouse and fuming about husbands and cats who don't understand the issue I have with mice running around my house.

By the morning, still no sign of the mouse. I tried to mouse-proof the bedrooms, putting all the stuffed animals and such up high so no nice nests could be made, and headed off to buy some mouse traps. Thankfully by the time I returned home with the kids from school, Lazy Cat had reacquired the mouse and done her job, unlike Dumb Cat a few weeks ago.

I should really close the cat door down for good. But the number of times a day I am forced to open and close the back door if the cat door is closed is just painful. Grrrr.

See M Run

Today we drove down the shore to watch M run his first half marathon. I have never in my life seen so many fit and happy people running so fast for so long. It made me feel, well, rather sluggish and embarrassed about my lack of athleticism. We missed M at the 5 mile mark and almost missed him again at the finish, but he apparently heard me harping at the kids to "Stop bickering and watch for Daddy!" from half a mile away. He finished in 2:12, and I was so proud of him that I cried. The kids were rather confused. "But he finished! That's a happy thing Mommy!"

We're all very proud of you M, even if the kids cried when they saw you because I had just told them that we weren't actually going to get to play on the beach today.

Overheard in the playroom

A: "I'm a mama bunny! Look at me! Hop, hop, hop."

C: "A, mama bunnies don't wear necklaces and rings. And they definitely don't wear hats."

A: "Well, they SHOULD. Everyone looks nicer with a pretty necklace."

Status Quo

The appointment with the allergist was both good and bad. The good, he agreed with the paramedics in that the breathing episode was probably not related to the hives, although of course it was hard to tell. The bad, we still have no real idea what is causing the hives. His best guess at the moment is that she is "allergic to being sick." Which is to say that she gets hives and additional congestion when her immune system kicks in. So as soon as she starts getting a sniffle, we are supposed to start dosing her with Zyrtec and Benedryl and see what happens. We should document the hives and get the pictures to him next time they appear (duh, why haven't I thought of that one before!), and come back to see him in a year when he will do some in-office trials with nuts and such, unless something massive happens.

He did do some testing to environmental allergens and discovered that she is "slightly" allergic to trees, which is why we are waiting another year on the nuts. Don't ask me to explain how the two are related, but apparently there is a link. She is not allergic to the cats (I knew that one, as Dumb Cat naps on her pillow almost every afternoon), grass, or mold.

We should keep lugging the epi-pen around just in case, as the whole "allergic to being sick" thing is just an educated guess. So basically, we walked out knowing not much more than we did walking in. Which isn't horrid I suppose, better than coming out with an "Oh my GOD, how did we miss this life-threatening allergy" diagnosis, worse than coming out with a "Oh, she's allergic to cats, send the cats off to your aunt's house and she will be magically cured." But at least we have a plan to deal with the nuts issue that involves an in-office trial, which makes me feel much more comfortable than randomly trialling them at home.

Thank you again for your support and continuing to read my obsessive posts on this issue. I now return you to your regularly scheduled drivel, which will involve another post in what is now becoming a series of "Look what the cat dragged in." And I have several knitting projects to post, I just have to get around to hassling with hooking up the camera. I believe that I even owe you a tour of my upstairs from almost a year ago, which I just might do if I have the camera hooked up anyway (depending on what the state of Mount Washmore is in my hallway....).

Status Report

• We head back to the allergist tomorrow. I was really hoping that when A turned three we would be magically done with this and we would never see the man again, and but clearly that is not to be.
• Not that the allergist isn't fabulous, he is. He is great with A and great with me and really listens, but still. One never particularly likes it when one's primary care doctor has to send you out to a specialist because your case is too complicated for her to manage.
• Half of the medical staff I have talked to have not been at all concerned about A's reaction, the other half have totally freaked out. Which kind of leaves me scratching my head and trying to decide which camp it is that I am supposed to be in.
• Clearly the allergist is in the latter camp as not a minute after I had hung up the phone after scheduling an appointment for the end of May with an unconcerned nurse, a different, highly concerned nurse called back and said he wanted to see us immediately.
• Although as Rebecca pointed out, as lovely a man as he is, he is also quite good at making sure he isn't vulnerable to a lawsuit. Which is rather understandable, given his choice of field.
• And since A's hives came back this evening (minus the breathing issues) I'm rather pleased that we are already seeing the allergist tomorrow, it saves me from having to call back and throw myself on the mercy of the nursing staff and beg for an appointment.
  
• On happier notes, the Cinderella Polly Pocket's glass slipper has been found (not that you knew it was lost) and all is good in the world of Disney Polly Pockets again.
• And Dumb Cat came back from wandering this afternoon freaked out beyond belief, so I have to assume that he discovered that the old house is now occupied by new residents.

Just the facts

So now that we have calmed down and made it through the night, and I don't feel quite as shaky (although I am still shaky and don't quite know if I will ever stop shaking), I can somewhat better explain the events of last night.

As I was reading A her bedtime book last night, I noticed hives covering one side of her face. I gave her Benadryl, they spread to the other side of her face, and then started disappearing on the first side. She wasn't getting them anyplace else like the last time, she seemed perfectly fine so I put her to bed.

About an hour later, she started coughing on the monitor. She's had a cough for a few days, so I didn't get worked up, but then it kept going and going and started to sound particularly strange, so I went up to check on her. She was still coughing, and seemed to be having a hard time swallowing. Which is about when I started to freak out a bit. I grabbed her out of bed, brought her downstairs an sat her on the counter while I tried to grab some water and get her to talk to me. She couldn't sit up, she started shaking a bit, and wouldn't respond to me when I spoke to her. I grabbed her Epi-Pen, the phone and sat on the floor. And I dialed 911.

All I could manage to get out was "My daughter is having a hard time breathing. She had hives." As I was sitting on the floor waiting for the 911 operator to relay the bits and pieces of information to the paramedics, I kept holding the Epi-Pen thinking "I need to jab her. I should really jab her. I can't do it. I can't do it." Then just as I was about to release the safety on the pen, she stopped coughing and started standing up and lurching about a bit.

A police officer arrived, and as I opened to door for her, A pretty much passed out on my shoulder. The officer and I kept shaking her awake until the five (or maybe 6?) EMT's and paramedics arrived. They checked her out, declared her perfectly fine, and thought that the coughing was actually caused by a mucus plug stuck in her throat rather than an allergic reaction. They asked if I wanted to go to the hospital, and I declined after discussing it with the head paramedic who said that there was really nothing to be done now since whatever her issues were had been resolved. They left and I finally freaked out.

Everyone was fabulous. The police officer and EMT's were quick to arrive (under five minutes, probably more like two or three) and nice as nice could be. They didn't make me feel dumb for calling (and I did, and do). C slept through the whole thing, and A has no recollection of the events and was very curious as to why she woke up in Mama's bed. Now I guess I need to call the pediatrician, although ours is still on maternity leave so I am dreading having to explain our whole medical history to her partner who doesn't know us from a hole in the wall and will probably think I am nuts (which I may be, I suppose).

It is just so frustrating. She gets these hives, we have no idea what causes them. She always seems to have some odd, unrelated complication when she does get them which leads me down the "Oh my God it is an allergic reaction progressing" path. And then by the time a qualified medical person makes it on the scene, it all resolves. And every time I say "This is the last time I am going to panic over this." But then something happens, like HER NOT BREATHING, and what am I supposed to do? I just want to cry.

Breathe

You take breathing for granted. You breathe in, you breathe out, you go about your day. Earlier this evening, I made my first phone call to 911. I didn't think at all about my breathing, I was instead focused on my child's lack of breathing. Through the entire experience I breathed in, and out, and in, and out, and somehow kept on living. And then when it was over, and A was breathing in and out again, and the paramedics had left, I finally noticed my own breathing as I sobbed in and out.

A seems to be doing fine. She is asleep on the couch next to me, breathing in and out. But I can't stop shaking.

Going, going, gone

No, I'm not leaving the blogsphere, even for the summer, as it will at some point get too hot to hang out in the shadeless back yard for hours on end and we will be forced indoors for large portions of the day.

But the old house? It is officially somebody else's new house now. The kids cried bitterly when we went over to say a final goodbye yesterday morning. I knew I had moved on when I handed the new owners the key to this house by mistake at the closing.

And Dumb Cat will be in for a rude shock when he goes prowling over there as they apparently have three dogs and two cats. I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot more of him from now on...

How do I love thee Google, let me count the ways

In my inbox this afternoon,

Thought you might be interested to know that as predicted, your blog has indeed rescued us random Google searchers who have been battling the same evil red child lock light on our dishwasher.

Thanks to your blog we have just figured out how to overcome its defensive tactics.
Many, many thanks!

A &V

I feel so useful now! And to think I was starting ponder hanging up my bloggy hat for the summer! But now who knows what other random pieces of trivia I might be able to share with the world???

Odds and Loose Ends

• In case you hadn't figured it out, I didn't end up applying for the job. I got bitter just thinking about how it would suck away the few free hours a week I have without a child attached to me, and once I did the math I realized that it didn't pay enough for me to afford a sitter for the kids during the hours I was working.
• Although somehow I managed to volunteer close to 30 hours a week over the past three weeks between C's school stuff and the church fund raiser without the help of a sitter.
• I think the difference is that the volunteer work was on my terms. I felt no guilt about walking away from it for an hour to take the kids to the park or out to eat. And if the kids started screaming in the middle of a meeting and I had to leave, no one could get worked up about it because I was a volunteer.
  
• OK, I felt some guilt about walking away in the middle of meetings, but I was able to work through it because hello, I wasn't getting paid.
  
• I think there is a fine line between a strong work ethic and a work-a-holic, and I have always fallen just over that line on the wrong side.
• The fund raiser went, OK. I got dragged into it pretty late in the decision making process, so a lot of the things I would have changed had already been set in stone once I came on board. At least I don't feel responsible for them.
• I have no idea how much money we made, I had to leave before the money got counted to relieve the babysitter. But I have a strong suspicion that it was not nearly as much as they had originally hoped for. Which should surprise no one since 150 less people attended than the initial guess as to how many parishioners would come to a Friday night event at a less than stellar function hall.
• I think the meal I didn't eat was perhaps the worst meal I have ever been served in my life. Even the cake was horrific. At least I felt no responsibility over it as the place had been booked long before I even knew there was going to be a fund raiser.
• Since no one knew who I was, I heard a lot of complaining about the details of the fund raiser. Which got me pretty worked up for a while. And then M pointed out that if they had felt so strongly, they should have gotten involved. Yeah! That's right!
  
• I think we did a pretty good job for a group of four people, two of whom worked full-time, one of whom was going through chemotherapy and one of whom had two small children at home. In fact, I think it is somewhat of a miracle that we pulled it off.
• Next time I want to be in on the ground floor of the planning process though. I already have a list going of the things that should have been done differently.
• Did I mention that I tend towards work-a-holicism?
• The kids were serious troopers though the whole thing. So I felt badly when I didn't win the raffle baskets they really wanted. But apparently C still loves me, even if I am not a very lucky mommy.
• And I am glad to be back in my favorite chair contemplating my next knitting project.
  

Warm and Fuzzy

Today in my random surfing of knitting blogs, I found one that referenced my mom's skill as a spinning instructor AND one that had pictures of the yarn shop I grew up in (although it looks nothing like I remembered). The world is indeed a small place...

See Nana? You're famous!

Ah, the silence

It is 11:25 pm and I have officially ended my fund raiser duties. My email is empty, my cell phone is silent. Tomorrow I can resume my normal life. Ahhh, the peace.

Overheard from the Backdoor

Chichimama: "Why are you coming inside? We just sunblocked you and you were so excited to play in the backyard!"

C: "I'm too hot to play outside."

Look what the cat dragged in

Dumb Cat :"Yewol."

Chichimama: "M? Dumb Cat brought in a mouse."

M: "Is it dead or alive?"

Chichimama: "Um, alive."

Dumb Cat chases the mouse into the toy closet. Dumb Cat loses interest in the mouse. The mouse escapes into kitchen. Chichimama throws Dumb Cat at the mouse again. Dumb Cat half heartedly chases the mouse under the buffet in the dining room. Dumb Cat wanders off to the food bowl.

M: "Wait, Chichimama, where are you going?"

Chichimama: "To get the camera of course!"

M: "Um, hello? There is a mouse in the dining room. How about gloves from the garage?"

Chichimama grudgingly procures both gloves and the camera.

M captures the mouse using Chichimama's new magazine. Dumb Cat continues to ponder his food bowl.
M returns the mouse to the great outdoors.

Dumb Cat scratches his neck.


M: "Where do you want me to put the magazine?"

Chichimama: "Throw it out!"

M: "What, are you afraid of the plague or something?"

Chichimama: "Exactly."

MIA

So I'll be MIA for a while. After my whining that I wasn't able to volunteer as much as I wanted at church, I somehow ended up a co-chair of a massive fundraising dinner, which is taking place on Friday. Clearly, I have left y'all out of the loop, because really, fundraising dinner planning is not really blog fodder. But as my life is now consumed by seating plans and late RSVP's and writing fun, cheery write ups of gift baskets and silent auction donations (Are you planning a European vacation? Have you always wanted to visit South America? Well, now is your chance! With airfare climbing, take this opportunity to bid on two international round trip tickets. Start planning your next vacation today!), I'll be nice and spare you the agonizing details of my life for the week.

But, for your amusement, I leave you with the following tidbit overheard from C...

C: "My thinking box is broken!"

Rebecca: "C, why don't you think outside the box?"

C: "Um, I really like to think IN the box."

M: "Never, ever say that in a job interview, OK?"

I'm SO not an Alpha Mom

Gina had a post that introduced me to a new term, Alpha Mom. Since in my usually clueless way, I had no clue what the buzz was all about, I did a bit of Googling. And although I'm still a little unclear what exactly it takes to be an Alpha Mom, what IS clear is that as I sit here with no career in faded yoga pants and a fleece jacket that is a decade or so old as my children watch not-so-educational TV, I am SO not an Alpha Mom. I can guarantee that not a single person I meet in my day to day life is going to run out and buy something because I am wearing it or using it. In fact, I am fairly confident that they will take one look at my life and make a mental note to NOT do what I do.

As I read up on the life of the Alpha Mom, it made most of me want to run screaming away from my computer. But, deep down inside, there is a small part of me that believes in the Alpha Mom and likes to think that I could be one. Sometimes I daydream about what it might be like to have a high-powered career, headed off to the city every morning dressed in the latest fashion with my Blackberry and laptop, cheerily kissing C and A goodbye knowing that they were being lovingly cared for by the village that I had hired to make sure that they ate their vegetables, peed on the potty and attended the appropriate enriching activities. And let's be clear, I wouldn't be working because I had to, but because I wanted to.

I would come home at night to happy children who were ready to spend quality time with me, and then I would have grownup conversations with M about my job and all the amazing things I had done that day. Oh, and at some point in this scenario, I made it to the gym too, and I have miraculously lost the ten (or 20) extra pounds hanging around my middle. Although I haven't quite worked out in my mind when my gym time is. I have a sneaking suspicion that I ended up building a home gym in the basement and workout while watching CNBC after the kids are in bed, but that part of my fantasy is still a work in progress.

Then I wake up from my fantasy world, and go back to the life I really lead. And most of the time, I'm OK with that because no matter how much they say that being an Alpha Mom isn't about trying to be perfect, from where I'm sitting it looks an awful lot like the Supermom concept repackaged. And I don't really want her therapy bills.

Wrong, just wrong

It should NOT be so cold in mid-April that my kids had to wear hats and mittens to the playground. And my heat should NOT still be on all. day. long. This weather is making me bitter and grumpy, and generally not pleasant. Plus, my flowering trees are, well, not flowering, and I STILL have no idea what types of flowers, if any, I have in any of my beds because there is no hint of green anyplace on my property.

Remind me of this in three months when I start bitching about how it is just.too.hot. to move, OK?

Overheard in the hallway

A: "I want a monkey back ride!"

Chichimama: "You mean a piggy back ride?"

A: "No, a MONKEY back ride."

Chichimama: "A, it is called a piggy back ride."

C: (rolling eyes) "Mom, she CALLS it a MONKEY back ride because she hang on your back like a MONKEY, not a pig. WHY on EARTH did ANYONE decide to call it a piggy back ride? I JUST don't understand."

A: "Yeah. What C said."

Overheard all over the place

Chichimama: "Who is the silliest?"

A: "You are!"

Chichimama: "Who is the funniest?"

A: "You are!"

Chichimama: "Who is the best?"

A: "I am!"

------------------
Chichimama: "Why do your rooms smell so, fruity? Did you sneak an apple or something up here?"

C: "No, I think it is because we took a bath. That's what clean smells like Mom."

-------------------

C: "I've decided what my Monday Morning News is going to be!"

Chichimama: "Oh! What? I can't wait to hear what you decided!"

C: "That we had carrots for dinner!"

Chichimama: "What about the tractor ride and the visit from Julia or the trip to the museum?"

C: "Yeah, that was all fun, but I think I'm sticking with carrots for dinner."

The Missing Egg

It seems inevitable that there is a missing egg (or three) after every Easter egg hunt. Having learned from my parents' mistakes, I refuse to hide hard boiled eggs but instead hide those of the brightly colored plastic variety. Last year, one yellow egg went missing, never to be found. We kept saying that it would turn up when we moved, but here we are, moved into the new house and the egg has yet to be found. Happy Easter to you, new owners!

This year we have three missing eggs. The children have long since given up the egg hunting ghost, and moved onto the consumption of copious quantities of candy. My husband, however, is still prowling the house, searching for the missing eggs. Lifting cushions, squinting under tables, muttering incoherently to himself. I wonder how many hours he'll be at it?

Schedule Slaves

Not So Little Sister posted a minor whine a while back about friends who had a small child and how impossible it was to schedule a time to see them because of their devotion to their child's schedule. I sat on my hands for a while, and then finally felt compelled to admit that we are TOTAL slaves to the children's schedules. It is less obvious now that they don't nap, but there was a point in time that there were only about three hours a day when I was willing to actually see people. Generally between 3 and 6pm, and only at our house or someplace really close by to try and keep someone from falling asleep in the car.

I am absolutely and totally completely sure that all most of our friends (including those with kids) thought we were certifiable. But when one has lousy sleepers, which I do, the thought of doing ANYTHING that might cause them to sleep even less than they usually do gives one panic attacks of massive proportions. Because if they don't sleep when they are supposed to sleep, they won't make it up for days.

Unlike most children (and grownups), if my children stay up late they won't sleep in a little bit the next day. Instead they will get up at their usual time (best case scenario) or (worst case scenario) they will get up even earlier. Which means that they will spend the next day flipping out over the minor things in life like the fact that the purple cup is in the dishwasher, or the fact that their sock is on slightly askew. Then, come bedtime, they are so overtired they can't fall asleep. Or, if by some miracle they DO fall asleep on time, they then wake up seven times in the middle of the night screaming bloody murder. And this vicious little cycle continues for days, until finally their bodies give in and they either fall asleep in the car or in front of the TV and catch up a bit.

After having experienced this little cycle a few times, M and I quickly became slaves to the schedule. Because we really couldn't think of an event that was worthy of such painful and horrific torture. Especially once there were TWO children in the mix. The kids go to bed at 7pm, 8pm if there is something REALLY special going on, like New Years Eve or my cousin's wedding. We even plan our (few and far between) airplane rides around the sleep schedule rather than the cheapest fare. Because the price we pay for flights that get us in before 4pm is well worth the sanity involved in getting the kids settled and in bed at 7pm.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that last night we had some old friends over for a get together. Since it was at our house, I figured that at 7, 7:30 my children would begin to get tired, head upstairs and go to sleep. Because that was what happened at New Years, which was not so long ago. But 7pm came and went and they were going strong. "Ah well," I thought. "8pm is doable." 8pm came and went and they were going strong. M and I were having fun, our friends were having fun, and we had not had to intervene with the seven children trashing our playroom for over three hours. I looked at my watch, looked at my glass of wine and my tushie firmly planted on the kitchen stool, and internally shrugged. "Ah well, they are older now, they have been sleeping better, I bet that they will go to sleep any minute now and then sleep in just a little."

At 9:30pm, A finally asked to go to bed. At 10:15pm, C finally headed up to bed. At 11pm, we finally headed up to bed. And if you think this story has a happy ending, well, that remains to be seen. But my children were up at 6:30am this morning. So you do the math. But for once, I can say that the fun that was had was worth the pain that we may suffer today.

Overheard at Dinner

C: "I have NO idea what my Monday Morning News is going to be next week. I JUST can't decide. I mean, we went to Nana's, I pet a baby lamb, I drove the tractor, I swung on the tire swing, I went to the Discovery Museum, I saw my friend Julia from London, I ate two bites of brisket at the seder, and I got a new old guitar. And it is only Wednesday! I wish it were vacation week ALL the time!"

Random Bullets of Travel

• We went to Nana's for a long weekend, but now we're back and most of you didn't even know we were among the missing in teh blogsphere. Isn't technology grand?

• I did log in a few times on Nana's computer, which is much slower than mine (no offense Nana) but it was rather freeing to not have my laptop open for four days.

• Of course, now that I am back, I missed you so, dear laptop. Your keyboard with its keys designed for a smaller hand...

• I did the drive both ways with the kids by myself. And we only had to make one potty/lunch stop on the way up, two on the way back thanks to the ill-advised 24 oz bottle of water I handed back because I forgot the kid-sized drinks on Nana's counter. I think I may have finally arrived at the point at which travel by car is almost manageable.

• Of course, if I ever, ever hear Tacky the Penguin again, I may explode into a billion pieces. "How many toes does a fish have, how many wings on a cow..." Sorry.

• On the trip back we stopped off at Rebecca's mom's house for Seder. Ah, the brisket. The carrot soufflé, how many ways do I love you.

• It was the first Seder since C and Julia were born that the grownups didn't have to whip 40 billion distraction tricks out. The five year olds sat and listened, and the three year olds did, in their own way.
  

• Although about half-way through A started making up her own Haggadah, "And then all the nasty creatures went away and the people felt better and they all lived happily ever after, Amen."

• Only last year, Rebecca and I had been wondering when it was that we would enjoy ourselves again at Passover. I think this probably would have been the year, had I not still had to drive an hour and a half listening to Tacky the Fricking Penguin.

• It was lovely to see Rebecca, and not at all sad to leave her since we will see them all again in two days.

• Along with an afikomen gift, C salvaged a broken guitar slated for the trash. He is hugging it as he watches TV right now. I need to get the child music lessons one of these days.

• Now I have to face the house I left trashed in my hurry to hit the road Thursday night, and the grocery store. But it is raining. Do you think we can last another few days on tinned fruit and cereal without milk???