Let the dog in!

Dear Kid,

Yes, it’s your birthday. Yes, you’re finally 7 years old.

I hope you’re happy with yourself, and all your constant growing and stretching. I just want to know: when will it stop??

Where is my cute, monkey toddler? The one I found climbing kitchen cabinets at 4am and smearing food coloring on the counters?

She’s practicing her Hanna Montana guitar video game, that’s where.

She’s combing her hair v-e-r-y slowly while gazing at herself in the mirror.

She’s sticking out her hips (where’d those come from?) and posing for photos with her arm up, fingers flicked, in the air.

She’s asking when she can start driving a car.

Somehow my own birthdays aren’t hitting me so hard as your birthdays.

Can you just slow down a teeny bit? For your old mom?

No?

Well, as we say around here, I love you anyway.

Happy Birthday, Kid.

Ever since the hubs broke his leg real good, he’s been taking Oxycodone for the pain.

Wikipedia describes this drug as “an opioid analgesic medication synthesized from opium-derived thebaine.”

After living with someone taking this, I’m beginning to see it more as “that half-drunk idiot you never wanted your brother to hang out with.”

Here’s the kind of thing conversation we have with it:

Normal Hubs: Could you get me another pillow for my leg?

Oxy: I’M GONNA REORGANIZE ALL OUR GEAR IN THE GARAGE TODAY!

Normal Hubs: Maybe I’ll go out to the mailbox today and get the mail, but then I’ll rest.

Oxy: HEY, LET’S GO CAMPING!

Normal Hubs: Whew! I’m a little tired from doing that load of laundry.

Oxy: I CAN TOO CAMP! I’LL DO ALL THE WORK! YOU WON’T HAVE TO!

Normal Hubs: I might have overdone it a little today walking that half block.

Oxy: I CAN TOO DRIVE! EVEN THOUGH I BROKE BOTH BONES, I CAN STILL FLEX MY RIGHT FOOT UP AND DOWN.

Normal Hubs: Can you get me more chamomile tea?

Oxy: WHAT IF I ONLY DRIVE ON THE ISLAND?? IT’LL BE FINE! WHY ARE YOU SO UPTIGHT!?

Me: Give me one of those pills.

(you DO remember that PSA, don’t you? don’t act all oh-I’m-too-young-to-remember-that)

this is your my brain on stress…

No, not a squid, but an attempt at pizza making…

It started off innocently enough. I was going to make pizza for the family, nice, fresh homemade pizza.

We’ve been under stress lately and this seemed like a good solution.

Under pressure? What you need is to make a fresh pizza! Sure, that’s a good answer….

Just remember one thing:

If you had a pizza stone but it cracked and you threw it away a year ago, you cannot slide your uncooked pizza off the peel (that wooden paddle thingy) into the oven where it then lands on the bare oven rack, dripping and sagging in between the metal rods, like the raw, mushy dough that it is.

Yup. Just remember that and your pizza will turn out great.

Also, Papa Murphy’s pizza isn’t really so bad.

Remember that, too, just in case.

*sigh*

Life’s been a little rough around here, what with the Hubs breaking his leg so expertly and having his work situation equally precarious.

To draw you a picture, I’ve felt kind of like this:

(I’m the one on the boat)

Or maybe it’s not so dramatically dangerous as that. Maybe it’s more like this:

(We’d be the house, not the river)

So, I’m working on letting go of these images.

I’m trying to imagine it more like this:

Or possibly just this:

Now, how to make that happen.

Execution, that’s always the difficult part, isn’t it?

Perhaps, I’ll take the short cut and just make this:

Although then I may look like this:

What’s a girl to do? How are you feeling these days?

Sure, you love bacon. Sure, you love that great bacony smell, cooking and splattering in the kitchen. Sure, you’re a busy person constantly on the run.

Have we got the product for you:

Yes! You are not dreaming!

Bacon in a can!
The hubs, being the emergency-preparedness, man v. wildnerness nutjob survivalist extraordinaire, bought BACON IN A CAN.

My complaint? Other than the mega-pallet of this crap taking over the garage It’s not extra crispy. No, it’s more on the limp side.

But, I try to look at it as half-cooked like all my plans lately, so half my job is done already, right?

What would you do with such goodness in a can? Keep one in the car for snacking during traffic jams? While waiting at school pickup?

Such an excellent summertime snack, yes??

Click here to find out what my favorite sign of summer is. Just in case you were wondering…

You won’t be disappointed.

Okay, you might be since you’re only reading about it and not getting any of the yumminess (I’m so mean that way).

Alright, here’s a tiny hint:

But that’s all you get!

Now, scoot!

Hey there! Did ya have a good Fourth of July?!

The 4th here was great. And I have a video of the fireworks we saw in our little Bainbridge Island harbor to prove it.

Ah, yes, it was lovely. I even ran my second 5K that morning and managed to move around afterwards to see our local parade. *insert chirping, happy birds*

Little did we know the following day we’d have this in the backyard (& for weeks to come):

Evil, irregular hedge growth, you ask?

Don’t I wish.

That, my friends, is what you get when your husband falls off the ladder while trimming a giant hedge. And breaks his leg. Badly.

Worse than that last time, three years ago.

And I ain’t gettin on that ladder to finish the job! I have more important things to do, like ice bag refilling, pillow fluffing, and food preparation for the hubs.

The hubs, a rugged Alaskan, calmly said immediately after while leaning on his good leg, “Um, honey? I think I just broke my leg.” In response, the kid and I did our best Keystone Cops impression, scrambling around, bumping in walls and screaming WHAAAAATTTTT??!!!!

And what a silver lining that he’d broken his other leg three years earlier because being the hoarder pack-rat that he is, the hubs still had the crutches.

Now our summer is f#^*$ up, on painkillers topsy-turvy.

To add salt to the wound, while in downtown Seattle for the hubs’ CAT scan the following day, I got this:

Yes, I put 2 quarters in an apparently to everyone but me broken meter and found that little gem ten minutes later.

I swear, it’s enough to turn a person to drink. Oh, wait, I already am at 8am now do.

I just have to ask–

Universe, what did we ever do to you??