Observations and Ponderings from the Couch

For about the 3rd time this fall, I am sick. This time it is the variety that comes with buckets of snot and stuffy ears. I spent Thursday and Friday evenings on the couch. These are some of the things that I observed and thought about while I was resting:


1. Once they realized that I was sick and was not going to get up and tend to their every tiny, little need, my children commenced to play together for about 2 hours on Thursday evening. It was a minor miracle (along the same lines of finding a $20 bill in your old coat pocket... quite rare and pleasantly surprising.) At the end of the playing together, every room of our house was a disaster and there was "cheese-water" on the kitchen table (don't ask).


Question: Would they always play so nicely if I were "sick" on the couch? Could I test them to find out??


2. Blue's Clues is about the same whether or not it is a Steve episode or a Joe episode. Either way, it's one of the best, most tolerable kid's shows on tv. The reason we are partial to Steve at our house has less to do with the fact that he is the Original Guy and more to do with the fact that I'm certain Nate will grow up to look a LOT like Steve (just hopefully without the shirt):





Question: What should we do with his hair? It grows into a point on his forehead!!



3. The Office is a very funny show. Hilarious, especially having worked in an office. I love that the characters are played by real looking people. Steve Carrell is a comic genius, much the same way the Steve from Blue's Clues was a genius with the Notebook.


Question: If your name is Steve, are you destined to work in television?


4. The dog ate the dirty kleenexes that I put in a plastic bag on the floor next to the couch. She shredded them all over the navy blue rug. It will have to be vaccuumed, but our good vaccuum finally broke and our cheap vaccuum can barely suck hard enough to .... well, ok I'll stop there. But you get the idea.


Question: What is it about my snot in the kleenexes that made the dog want to eat them? For the love of goodnes...


5. On the topic of kleenexes... The kind with lotion are a MUST for anyone with a terribly snotty nose. How did people survive before this invention? I'm rating Puffs Plus at the botttom of My Favorite Inventions list. Other items on the list (in case you are curious) include such items as tampons, contact lenses, vasectomies, pharmaceuticals (but not their corporate entities) and baby formula. Lord only knows how hideous my existence would be without these items.

Question: If I had to give up one of these for the rest of my life, which one would it be? (And baby formula doesn't count since I'm not having any more babies... unless, of course, I pick vasectomies.)


6. I watched Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq, which is a documentary film by HBO and Executive Producer James Gandolfini. It is about soldiers who have lost part of themselves (literally) to the war and how they feel about it. I recommend that in honor of Veteran's Day, everyone watch this film. It is easy for someone like myself who opposes war and has literally NO veterans in my family to talk about how horrible war is... but it is another thing to watch people who have given up life as they knew it to try to protect our country. And whether or not I believe that protecting us from Iraq was a necessary endeavor, these people still showed courage beyond what I am capable of and continue to on a daily basis.

http://www.hbo.com/aliveday/
Question: DOES GEORGE BUSH CARE THAT MORE AMPUTEES ARE COMING OUT OF THIS WAR THAN ANY OTHER WAR SINCE THE CIVIL WAR???

A Fork of a Different Color

Snapshot of our life:

No, he didn't poke himself in the eye with his fork. He is sobbing because he couldn't have the green fork AND the green spoon (dishwasher). It was a major display of stubborn Irish temper that resulted in me offering him every other kind of spoon that we had and him vehemently rejecting all offerings. Could I have gotten the green spoon out of the dirty dishwasher? Yes, I could have. I could have washed it off and given it to him and probably stopped the tantrum right then and there. But Maia and I had both been sick and all silverware really did need to go through the dishwasher in order to be sanitized. Plus, it was the principle of the matter. Is it ok to cry and throw a huge tantrum over the color of your spoon? I think not. At some point, we all have to learn that we cannot have our favorite silverware all of the time. So far, Nate has not learned this. The purple spoon was not ok. The Winnie the Pooh spoon was hideous. The regular Oneida flatware... loathesome!!! And the real kicker about it all? He didn't have a single food on his plate that required a spoon. No applesauce or jello or soup or anything remotely sloshy or liquid.

If I'm remembering it all correctly, he didn't eat much supper that night. He never recovered enough from the meltdown to eat his cold food. I had even brought him my leftover McDonald's frech fries from that day's lunch because he LOVES french fries. But he didn't care. It was all about the spoon that night. And given Nate's propensity for crying at suppertime, it won't be the last time he cries about his spoon. Seriously, the kid cries at 80% of all dinnertimes which is why we let him eat in front of the tv so much. I guess that night we should have found a Diego video and planted him there for supper.

What a horrible Mom!! And to think that in the middle of it all, I took his picture!! ;)