This morning I was led to believe that someone called Monkey Jim was in my house.

Youngest woke this morning and asked urgently for "muckeegeem." That's the phonetic approximation. One of the first things you discover when your toddler turns verbal is that phonetics do not apply. What comes out of the baby's mouth as opposed to what the baby intended to come out of her mouth are sometimes two entirely different things. You find yourself instead playing a little game of "now if I were the baby, what would I say?" And then you rattle off a bunch of similar-sounding words and phrases until the baby hears you say the right thing and perks up.

I've gotten pretty good at the game. See, if Youngest and I are going for a walk and she says, "ahmunnawideinnatolla!" you can bet she meant to say, "I want to ride in the stroller." If you're rocking her to sleep and suddenly feel moved to sing the lullaby your mother sang to you when you were a baby, she might reach up and put her fingers over your mouth and say, "nosingingdatsong!" which means, "You have no vocal ability and you're making my ears ache, so please stop."

But there's no context in the morning when she's just woken up, and who knows what Monkey Jim-type characters could have been entertaining her while she slept. She smiled at me quizzically. "Nooo…No muckeegeem. Muckeegeem."

"Muddy gem?"

"No. Want the muckeegeem."

"Money gleam?"

She tried pronouncing it slower for me as if I were a retard. "Muckeeeeegeeeeeemmm!"

"Many… geems? What's a geem?"

"GEEEM! GEEEM!" She seemed to be thinking, could I be any more clear?

"Okay," I said, trying to take a step back and locate some clues. "Should we go look for the, uh, muckeegeem?"

"In sissy's room," she said. "We go find it."

Ah ha! The location had been established. We knocked on Oldest's door, who was grumpily putting an outfit together for school. "Muckeegeem," I said to her. "Translation?"

Oldest looked at me blankly and then put her arm around Youngest, leading her conspiratorially a few feet away from me. "What's she talking about?" she asked Youngest.

Youngest seemed relieved. "I want muckeegeem," she explained. "I pwess de buttons. Pway muckeegeem."

"Oh, okay," said Oldest. She went to her junk drawer and pulled out a little electronic handheld game in which pressing buttons causes pixilated monkeys to jump over barrels to the tune of loud, monotonous beeping. Youngest squealed with glee at the sight of it.

Monkey game. Much less spooky than the idea of Monkey Jim hanging out in my closets.

Today's top five coping mechanisms for having too many large projects with small deadlines:

1. Eat raw fish.
2. Sing along with Cat Power songs.
3. Imagine that Chan Marshall and I regularly share insights and eat sushi together.
4. Wonder if Chan Marshall likes sushi, and suppose that even if she didn't she'd pretend to just so we'd have an excuse to hang out.
5. Decide that if Chan Marshall is going to lie to me about something as fundamental as sushi, she has no business hanging out with me anyway, and how dare she call herself my friend if she can't even be honest and up-front with me.

Good point and well stated. Closes with the Kurt Vonnegut passage of which I am most fond.

I am so proud of Youngest. She has adopted the time-honored tradition of the Bedtime Water Stall.

I find it amazing that all of us as human beings, independent of any organized plot or intention, have at one time used the Stall on our caregivers. It works every time, and yet no adult can resist it.

Step 1. Refuse to go to bed. Wail, scream, beg, whimper, kick, and plead in an effort to avoid going to bed.

Step 2. Stand in your crib long after Mom has kissed you good night and closed your door, and howl without mercy.

Step 3. Suddenly stop crying, sniffle plaintively, and call out with sincere earnestness, "Mom? Mommy………?"

Step 4. Give Mommy a second to wonder if the cessation is some kind of trick, and then call, "Can I have a drink of water?"

Even the most steadfast and resolute Ferber parents find themselves weakening at this innocent request. They ask themselves whether their own rest or sanity at the end of a long day is worth denying their sweet child a simple drink of water, and the answer is always Of Course Not.

We can ignore requests for Oatmeal the puppy, Emily Baby, another blanket, a lullaby, a hug, and even one last kiss goodnight. But not water. It just seems so cruel to leave a small child all alone in a dark room without even a sip of water.

And maybe part of us remembers being that child and feeling relief wash over you when the door to your bedroom opened and your mother appeared with a small cup of water, backlit by the bright hallway light. She'd help you to sit up while keeping the covers tucked tight around you, perch on the edge of your bed and put one arm around your shoulders while you gratefully took the cup and leaned into her warm motherness for one last stolen cuddle before sleep.

I can't help it. The little voice calling "I habba dink of water?" will probably get me every time. Good for her.

"All right," I said to my stomach this morning, poking it awake. "It's been two weeks since we last spoke, and you promised me a verdict on the embryo situation."

It yawned and stretched, glaring at me distastefully. "Well you should know," it groused. "It's your uterus."

"You're the resident smart-ass. Shouldn't you have the inside story?"

"I told you already. Nothing new to report."

"Nothing growing?"

"Nothing but my sincere annoyance with this line of inquiry."

"Fine then," I said, and rolled out of bed in search of my favorite jeans.

"So, I'm thinking burritos for lunch?" said stomach.

With some difficulty, I closed the button on my jeans. "I'm thinking I'll no longer be attributing your roundish, womanly shape to anything maternal for a while."

"Watch it, or I'll work up some serious indigestion on your behalf. Bitch."

As much as I hate letting my stomach get in the last word, I had some strong coffee and such to lean into.

It's quirky how the corporate mind works.

You cut the headcount for a certain department just to see if we can all work harder and make up the difference. For the most part, we do. But it costs you a whole lot in overtime and freelance.

We point out that it would cost half as much to hire someone to do the work.

You ignore us. Then you have a great idea. We should hire someone!

I don't want to offend anyone's business ethics by saying too much, but consider this a public service announcement regarding things to watch out for when submitting your resume:

1. Be sure you have the correct date at the top of your letter. Yes, people do notice little things like that. If your letter is dated two years in the past, you look really pathetic. And if you claim to have written it on Oct. 15, 3003 please be prepared to describe how the human race has evolved in a thousand years. I really do want to know.

2. Leave out the pleading. Beginning your letter with "Please consider me…" and ending with, "Please, please call right away to set up an interview!" did not make me want to call you. It made me want to be far, far away from wherever it is that you are.

3. Keep in mind that the number of literary associations and poetry clubs you list on your resume to is inversely proportionate to people's respect for you as a copywriter. I don't know why. Counterintuitive, isn't it.

4. Use appropriate capitals. There is no shame in capitalizing a word at the beginning of a sentence. It does not make you appear stodgy or old-fashioned. If your IM friends tell you otherwise, they are not really your friends.

Stay tuned for more real-world resume tips and learn how to avoid having your resume plastered with post-its and passed around for others' amusement! Not that any of that goes on around here. That would be wrong.

The workforce of my department is 33% pregnant, with women ranging in progression from 6 to 38 weeks. Maternity leaves are blocked out on our calendars like big fluorescent streaks of freedom, and scheduling work is a strategic exercise in beating nature to the punch.

It works out well for me because there's always an ample stash of chocolate in the meeting room. But our (male) boss is more than a little sensitive to the fact that in an entirely female department, we're all ticking time bombs. He has even gently suggested that perhaps we might consider hiring a few men.

As I was sitting in the meeting room unwrapping another piece of chocolate, chatting with the pregnant girls, I happened to mention that I should stop eating so much sugar. It was making me feel icky.

They perked up. "Icky how?" they asked.

I thought about it. "Icky… nauseous…tired…crampy…"

"You're pregnant!" They cried with glee, clapping their hands and exchanging knowing looks.

"I am not pregnant," I said, a statement that started out with conviction and then, mid-sentence, struck me with the realization that it was not impossible and was therefore technically possible. And holy crap. Come to think of it, I was feeling extremely pregnant.

"You are!" they insisted, as if the baby alert had been tripped and red-flashing sirens were now going off above my head.

"No I'm not. Leave me alone. I have to pee," I said, and stood up to leave. "And my boobs are sore."

Across the table, one of them uncapped a permanent marker. "Can you smell this?"

"When was your last period?" someone else asked. And I should add that this question would indeed seem to cross the boundaries of polite conversation if I had not spent yesterday afternoon with the same crowd hashing out the pros and cons of membrane ruptures and episiotomies.

I sat back down. "I'm not sure," I said. I opened my calendar and looked back over the months. "In the last six weeks I've had three periods but at least one of them wasn't a real period because I'm still on the mini-pill."

This was followed by a brief discussion of the mini-pill's laughable effectiveness and the number of people we all know who have gotten pregnant on this so-called form of birth control. Then we stared at my calendar and decided I was either three days late or not due for another two weeks.

"This is ridiculous," I told them. "We're totally making this all up. I'm not pregnant."

Later, I had a heart-to-heart talk with my stomach. "Is there anybody in there?" I asked it.

"That depends," it said. "Are you talking about the fat deposits that keep asking for more chocolate, or the burrito that's trying to tell you that Mexican fast food is never a good idea?"

"That's not what I mean," I told it.

"Then no," said my stomach. "I assure you, we are as unpregnant as we could possibly get."

"That's what I thought!" I said.

"You might want to check back in two weeks, though."

As far as my eight-year-old is concerned, we're past the stage in our relationship where I can do no wrong. I am no longer met after work with squeals of glee and arms flung around my neck in an affectionate cling. She can go hours now without even acknowledging my existence. And the last time I was called "the best mom in the world" was when I offered to order pizza for dinner.

That's okay, I guess. But I do find myself taking on tasks that reassure me I am – if not "the best" – at least a good mom.

For example, there was the morning of picture day at her new school when I twisted a chunk of her hair into a funky braid, and she told me later that all the girls had admired her hair and asked her how it was done. Good mom.

There was the "summer reading club" I invented for her after she'd completed the official reading club program at the library within a matter of weeks. We made a chart on poster board with a maze of squares to color in for each 15 minutes of reading. Some of the squares were "prize" squares, with a big reward (a trip to the book store) at the end. Like I need to encourage the little bookworm to read... it felt like rewarding her with candy for finishing her cake. But still. It was a good mom moment.

I've recently taken on my most ambitious good mom project yet. I am making her Halloween costume. Not just cutting eye-holes in a sheet to make a ghost, not stacking two boxes together to make a robot. No, daughter wants to be Glinda from the Wizard of Oz. And so a Glinda costume I will create.

We took a trip to the fabric store and collected a sewing pattern, fabric, thread, pins, zippers, sequins, and bobbins.

As we stood in line with our arms full of ivory taffeta and tulle that would eventually become something resembling a gorgeous, princess-esque dress worthy of the Good Witch herself, a lady in line behind us said to Daughter, "What are you making?"

Daughter, dutifully polite, replied, "My Halloween costume, Glinda."

"Oh!" said the nice lady. "So your mommy is probably going to teach you to sew! I wish I knew how to sew."

That's when the panic attack set in. "Know HOW to sew?" I said to myself. "TEACH? You mean there's a skill involved that I should have mastered with proficiency enough to pass on to my offspring? It's not just sticking a bunch of fabric together?"

I should note that I am not a total sewing novice. I own a sewing machine and have in the past made things from patterns. However, I should also note that the sewing machine was given to me on my eleventh birthday, and that the last article of clothing I ever successfully completed was a fuzzy pair of pajamas for my Cabbage Patch Kid.

But as soon as words were out of the lady's mouth, Daughter looked up at me with a strange smile. Faith. She believed in me. I'd told her we could do this, and she believed we could.

After sitting the little prodigy down at the machine and teaching her to sew a straight line, I watched her turn out a quite respectable-looking pillowcase with our scrap fabric. She showed it to Dad and explained, "Mom taught me to sew!"

So maybe she'll never tell me I'm the best mom in the world when the costume is finished. It doesn't matter. Daughter has a new pillowcase and a new skill. I found out that my sewing machine does more than take up pants and repair rips. And we found something we like to do together.

I just hope Glinda will forgive the slightly bunched gathers and uneven hems…

The baby broke my heart this morning.

We have our routine. We wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, pile into the car, and Youngest and I head for Grandma's house while Dad waits with Oldest at the bus stop. However, today Grandma had arranged to come to our house and play. Dad, Oldest, and Youngest would hang out at home, and my piece of the morning puzzle was not needed.

So I kissed everyone good-bye and went out to the garage, started the car, and spent a few moments fumbling through CDs.

As I was fumbling, I noticed that the doorknob to the door between the house and the garage slowly turned. The door slowly pulled open. And in the doorway, still clinging to the doorknob above her head, stood a lone little girl with a mix of confusion and betrayal in her wide, blue eyes.

"What about meeeeee?" she cried.

She might as well have said, "Why don't you love me anymore, Mommy? Don't you cherish the special times we spend together on our morning drive? Remember yesterday when I pointed out the Big Tuck and you told me that it was called a Garbage Truck. And I said, Bawrbidge Tuck! I wiggled in my carseat and sang a little song about the Bawrbidge Tuck, and we both laughed. We laughed not because it was funny, but because we loved to hear the sound of each other's laughter. Don't I mean anything to you?"

Fortunately, within seconds Daddy swept her up from behind and explained the situation. I blew kisses. She waved, reassured.

The Care and Keeping of You is an excellent book and I highly recommend it to all young girls. However (and this is not necessarily a bad thing), it has taught my eight-year-old the "V" word.

The "V" word is one of the hazards of being a mother of girls, as well as being a girl yourself. There is no neutral alternative to the "V" word either, and believe me I've searched for it my entire life. You either come across sounding like a semi-verbal two-year-old or the business end of 1-900-HOT-SEXX.

One of the things I contemplated upon first becoming a mother was how I would call all parts of the anatomy by their proper medical terms and approach all discussions of natural bodily issues with frank, unembarrassed honesty so that my children would grow up free of shame.

For the first years of my daughter's life, I pointedly avoided any nonsense names for the nether regions. In fact, I avoided any names at all. I realized this was a problem when daughter, a well-spoken six-year-old, got kicked in the crotch by another kid and yelled, "Ow, my pancreas!"

By then it was too late to introduce baby names, and I was going to have to teach myself how to say the "V" word without flinching. I asked her again where it hurt, and then said, trying for nonchalant: "You know, it's called your V. . . "

"My what?"

"You know! Your Vuh. . . Um. The thing that's connected to your bladder."

"Oh. Okay."

Later, I overheard her threatening the kid that if he ever kicked her in the bladder again, she'd rip out his pancreas. We were not quite there yet.

I bought her the above book recently because it is published by American Girl, the wholesome alternative to Barbie and pop culture for the 7-12 female demographic. It contains friendly, illustrated discussions of the proper way to brush your teeth, how to eat a balanced diet, and other wholesome, healthy things.

I stopped by daughter's room one evening while she was lounging on her bed turning the pages. I plopped down next to her and glanced at the headline on the page she was reading.

YOUR FIRST TIME, it said.

"Christ!" I shouted, and grabbed the book out of her hands.

I was slightly relieved to find that it was referring, Judy Bloom-style, to that time of the month… or as we like to say, her first visit from Aunt Flo. Healthy, normal body discussion, I told myself.

I handed the book back, and she continued reading. At one point, she pointed to a word and asked, "What's this word? Vaaaa...?"

"Yeah, that. It's the thing connected to your bladder."

Youngest daughter is the only one-year-old I know who has mastered the Sneeze Ritual.

When she sneezes, I tell her, "Bless you!" in a tone of voice that one might also use to exclaim, "Wow, your head just exploded!"
She says, "Think-oo!"
"You're welcome," I say.

When I sneeze, she points her finger accusingly at me and says, "Bahs-oo!" with the same undercurrent of threat she uses when she sees the cat on the kitchen table and shouts, "Dit DOWN!"
"Thank you!" I say.
"Oo-weltim!"

She is a very thoughtful one-year-old.

There are two things that will ruin just about any barbecue: bees and wetting your pants.

In my defense, I've never been stung by a bee and I could very well be so allergic to them that a simple sting would send me to fatal anaphalactic shock within minutes. Large swarms of bees are spooky, and bees crawling into my soda can remind me of the girl I knew in third grade who swallowed a bee, and the bee stung the back of her throat, and her throat swelled up so she couldn't breathe, and they had to cut a hole in her trachea so she could breathe through a hollow pen, just like that episode of M*A*S*H. (Well, it could have happened.)

Also, it is not my fault that I wet my pants. It is the fault of a giant, inflatable moon jump recreational thing, my co-workers' insistence that it would be fun to act like children, and the fact that I've given birth to two healthy, eight-pound babies.

I've often told my oldest daughter that when something unfortunate or embarrassing happens, you have every right to act like nothing's wrong. When you wet your pants in front of twenty of your closest coworkers, there is no reason to stop and exclaim, "Holy hell! I just wet my pants!"

In the same way, a third-grade girl with a pen in her trachea has every right to ignore the stares of onlookers and go right on picking bees out of her soda. If you don't draw attention to yourself, no one will even notice anything is out of the ordinary.

I don't like being told what to do. Especially when it's coming from peanut-headed little order takers who don't know what they're talking about.

Today's drama unfolds in the local post office, centering on an issue that has become very near and dear to my heart. For a variety of reasons, I refuse to sign the back of my debit card. This little card is the access point to all of the money in my checking account, and unlike a credit card bill that I can refuse to pay, an unscrupulous person with my debit card can simply TAKE all of my money. Therefore, since never in my adult life have I EVER seen a cashier check my credit card signature against the signature I provide, I feel that signing my debit card is equivalent to signing over all my money to some random stranger.

I don't want to do it, and you can't make me do it.

For years I just left the signature field blank and very rarely encountered any resistance. When asked, I simply offered my driver's license as proof of my identity. What a great plan! So much more secure than a signature. And so, I decided to print in the signature field, "Please ask for ID."

Since then, I've been asked for my ID from people who never seemed to care before, and that makes me feel wonderfully secure. They feel secure, I feel secure. It's a very secure transaction.

Apparently, the post office has no interest in security.

I walked up to the counter and asked for a simple book of stamps. I hand the man my card, and he takes it, asking whether it's credit or debit. When I tell him debit, he immediately asks if I want any cash back. I decline. Then he flips over my card.

"Whoa, uh…"

"Oh, right," I say, reaching for my ID.

"I'm sorry, we can't accept unsigned cards."

"Well, my signature is on my driver's license. Let me get that out for you."

"The card itself has to be signed."

"But my name is on the card, which matches my driver's license, which has my photograph AND my signature."

"You have to sign your card," he says, pointing vaguely to a "NO CID" notice at the counter.

"So you're saying that if I sign it right now, I could go ahead and use it?"

"That's right."

"But then ANYONE could do that! How do you know I'm who I say I am? How do you know you didn't just offer some random stranger a book of stamps with cash back from MY checking account?"

"I'm sorry…"

"Okay, fine. I'll use my credit card." I hand him my signed credit card, which he flips, scans, and then hands back to me.

I take it, then hesitated. "You're not going to check it?"

"Um, I did."

"You looked to see that the back is signed. You didn't check it against my signature on the receipt. You have no idea whether the signatures will match. If they don't match, will you decline this transaction?"

"Um, we just have to have a signed card."

At this point I realized what I was dealing with. There was no battle to be won here, he just didn't care. He was doing what he was told until his next bathroom break, and when he came back he'd do what he was told some more. I was looking to the eyes of apathy, and before me stretched a vast, bleak expanse of not giving a shit.

Well, okay. Seems like a good time to redirect my frustration and pay a call to Pamela, the Spineless Insurance Adjustor Who Won't Return My Calls Because She Owes Me a Settlement Check for my Totaled Car.

I think I feel a latent spinal injury coming on…

There are many things that are wrong with today. Following are the highlights.

--the color red--
I pieced together an outfit this morning based on two shades of red, having no idea whether they are compatible or not, because I am colorblind. But don't tell anyone. I'm hiding my colorblindness from folks in the design department who will soon be instrumental in helping me modify my job description to include graphic design. Is that twisted or what!

--my subconscious--
I'm having recurring dreams in which people I work with are urging me to open up, take risks, reach out to others, and make friends. To my subconscious, I say: Shut up. Why can't you just make nice with the disembodied voices? They're not so bad. Now go back to your box and leave me alone.

--bad weather--
Two sweaters later, I'm still shivering. When rain causes the temperature to plummet from 80 to 60 outside, somehow our building misses the memo and keeps churning out frigid air until somebody kicks it (it's always me…)

--another survey--
I've got news for you, mister corporate communications. I don't know what our company's long term goals are, and I don't give a rat's patoot. And the next time you ask me to fill out a 30-minute long electronic survey about how you're doing, it had better prompt a secret door in my computer to open and spill forth unending Hershey's Kisses.

--your commute--
No matter HOW difficult it was for you to drive into work today, believe me I couldn't care less. I'm sure the traffic was miserable. I'm sure you left your house over two hours ago. I sympathize. Really. Okay, not really. We all drove in the same traffic and the same weather conditions, and you are not special for having done so.

I'm becoming one of those people who, when given lots and lots of challenging, high-profile work with an unreasonable deadline, just says "eff it!" and goes home in the middle of the day, sits in front of the TV with a big bowl of butterscotch pudding, and re-watches the extended DVD of Fellowship of the Ring.

I was disappointed this morning to find all of the work still waiting for me, not even slightly more finished than when I'd left it.

There's a reason for my uncharacteristic slacking, and that reason may shock and offend many readers. But I'm prepared to present that reason right here, in this public blogging forum, so that the truth may be told.

You see… I'm an inch and a half shorter than I initially thought.

I don't know how or when I determined my height years ago. After a certain point at the doctor's office (around the time they stop giving you stickers and Arrowroot cookies when you behave yourself) they stop measuring you at every appointment. They don't stop weighing you, though. Ironically. I suppose at some point I got it into my head that I was five feet and eight inches tall.

This is not the truth. I am only five feet and seven inches tall. And that "seven" is a generous seven. But I will call it seven in the same way that all numbers on the scale below fives are rounded down.

So while I'm sitting here figuring out how to relate to myself as short, fat, and lazy, you can ponder the most logical conclusions to be drawn from this sad epiphany: butterscotch pudding tastes best with a little dollop of Cool Whip stirred in, and blogging makes you short.

This past weekend, the kids and I were playing out in the yard. The littlest one was scooting with difficulty through the grass on a little Radio Flyer trike, absorbing a few lessons about the physics of surface drag. The oldest was wandering around looking sullen.

"We need a swing set out here," I observed.

Oldest gave me a "thank-you-Captain-Obvious" look. "Swings, slide, sandbox, and trapeze."

"Clubhouse," I one-upped.

"Treehouse," she countered.

We do have the perfect, kid-friendly tree in our yard that's been begging for some interaction. "We could hang a rope ladder from that tree, build a platform around the lowest branches, and put a trap-door down to a tire swing…"

I was suddenly caught up in memories of the slapped-together playgrounds of my youth. My dad, who went through disposable cars quicker than a pack of matches (as a form of recreation), would periodically go out into the yard and slap something together for us. He'd hang an old tire from a rope, sling it over a branch, and call it fun. He'd nail some spare lumber to a tree and viola! Fort.

I'm surprised any of us kids survived.

But thinking back made me realize that you didn't necessarily have to buy a swing in order to have one. We just needed some rope.

So we went out and bought rope. Don't judge me. Honestly, if we'd had rope just lying around, we would have used the lying-around rope.

* * *

Step two was to somehow flip one end of the rope over the sturdiest branch. The most favorable branch happened to be 12 feet above us. I looked at Oldest.

"You climb the tree," I told her. "I'll throw this rope up to you, and you'll drop it down over the other side.

"I'll fall," she replied, as if logic were clearly on her side and I should be hauled off to parenting prison for even suggesting it.

"I'll catch you."

"Make the baby do it," she suggested.

The baby looked up hopefully from her struggle with the trike, her eyes alight with the promise of danger. "Ab TEE!" she squealed, which meant: "Give me the rope. I shall hold it thusly between my six teeth whilst I scurry to the top of the tree with the alacrity of a young squirrel. Now move out of my way!"

I looked back at Oldest. "Ascend the tree."

* * *

Rope secured, we had only to invent a seat for our swing. Initially, I entertained the idea of just tying a large knot at seat-level. Mom tested it. Do you have any idea how many muscles it takes to support a grown person's weight dangling from a rope? I will tell you: All of them. One becomes acutely aware of the fact that one is no longer a 52-pound 8-year-old in such a situation.

We scoured the garage and shed for seating materials, all the while I was asserting, "I will NOT purchase a prefab plastic swing seat. I will NOT." Running to the store at this point would have cheapened the whole endeavor. We were engrossed in a real-life learning activity. This was innovation in action. I was teaching my kids to be clever, creative, persistent, and resourceful.

"Look for something we can use for a seat," I told Oldest, all the while thinking that the perfect seat was sitting in a package on a Toys R Us shelf, constructed of molded plastic. In lieu of it, we tried a piece of lumber (the corners were too sharp), a stick (too flimsy), PVC (too slippery), a knotted towel (too droopy), and countless other failed materials.

In the end, resourcefulness paid off. Oldest shouted, "HEY!" from the corner of the garage and I looked up to see her waving a foam "noodle" that we used for swimming. This noodle was firm enough to serve as a support while still providing squishy, butt-hugging comfort.

Now my children can look back fondly on this adventure and tell their children about the swing Mom built.

Noodle-on-a-rope, they'll call it. And their children will cringe.

We are rapidly approaching a level of sophisticated e-living. By this I mean that I may never have to shop for clothing outside of an online catalog again.

I haven't lived 27 years of life without uncovering certain truths about my wardrobe choices. Let's look at these facts:

I know what size I wear.

I never pay more than $15 for a pair of pants.

Mixing earth tones with jewel tones is wardrobe suicide.

Although this would seem to peg me as the ideal online shopper, I recently made my very first major online clothing purchase. A catalog came in the mail, addressed to the house's former mistress. (I should add that we're also still getting the previous mister's Victoria's Secret catalogs, so I've since confronted and dealt with any oogy feelings about catalog contents and their intended recipients.) This particular catalog contained an extensive clearance section with many pairs of pants under $15. Many were in fact under $10. And a few were under $5!

This was clearly an avenue of purchase worth exploring. So, in true anal-retentive fashion, I armed myself with a stack of post-it notes and proceeded to flag every item I would consider wearing. I believe I flagged at least 500 items. I then made lists. Many, many lists. I listed by price and by season, by color and body region. Every item was justified, rationalized, and closely scrutinized.

I ordered close to 20 pieces of clothing and spent $81.40, shipping included, after mining the various coupon codes and promos.

Now when my new $5 blouse is stained with Koolaid-laced baby kisses, I'll consider it $5 well spent.

I've apparently reached a point in my life where right now at work looks a lot like this time last year. I came across this, which I wrote about a year ago...

< July 22, 2002 >
And without warning, work has ground to a screeching halt.

I'm still in panic mode. I'm still in "write this 12-page brochure in 5 minutes" mode. So I had one project left on my desk that was supposed to last me all week. It's done. I'm bored. And the week is stretching out ahead like a few hundred miles of dead Kansas flatlands.

I want to be busy. It's not that I have any unusually strong work ethic, or that I'm opposed to killing time on the clock. But I can't look like I'm bored, and I can't ask for more work. If I did, my boss would either a) give me busywork, or b) downsize me. Neither sounds like more fun than I could devise on my own. So here's my list of scheduled activities for a typical day this week:

8:30-9:45 Log in, check email, check web email, check alternate web email, respond to emails, check hits counter on site, check hits on alternate site.

9:45-10:00 Attempt to doctor the office coffee with varying amounts of Folgers Cafe Latte mix so it reaches acceptable drinkability levels.

10:00-10:15 Scavenger-like, wander around the building looking for departments who have brought in bagels, donuts, leftover birthday cake, etc.

10:15-10:17 Duck into a bathroom stall and consume findings before anyone wonders who I am and why I'm eating their department's food... or judges me for eating cake with my fingers.

10:17-11:00 Head back to office and open various Word documents, arranging them on my screen so they look important. Lay out several printed drafts on my desk and mark them up with arrows and margin edits. Stick cryptic post-it to computer that says, "Mtg JB 11am - br. WBS htst!"

11:00-1:00 Lunch.

1:00-3:30 Blog, blog-hop, toss a few emails, surf sites of interest, post on message boards.

3:30-4:30 Rifle through scheduled jobs to double check that nothing is due before October. Yep, still caught up. Ah. Contemplate leaving early.
< / July 22, 2002 >

Fixed!

Let the eggshell-finish latex begin.

Surprise.... it's green. Or brown, or orange. Whatever.

I was thinking of painting a few rooms in my house but can't get over the initial fear of botching it. So I've made a mess of my blog to prove to myself that mistakes are fixable.

I'll fix it tomorrow. Right now I'm going to leave work and embark upon the peril that is driving. Please, please, if you see me on the road... just don't hit me.