I keep a running list in my head of things I want to write about and I came up with a whole bunch of them over the weekend but now my head is full of four days of work crap and all the good, juicy bits are gone. I am hoping that if I start typing, some of them will fall out by accident. Let’s see how it goes.

++++++++++++

A friend of mine has been posting recipes lately, so I thought I would post one of my own:

HELENA’S RECIPE FOR STINKY CAR

1) Make a pot of Refrigerator Soup. (This is where you have some celery that’s getting wilty and there’s nothing left to do with it but make soup and throw in all the veggies you can find lying around. Suddenly you get a free meal, when all you thought you had was compost.)

2) Eat the soup for two days and then make sure it gets put into a plastic container and shoved into the back of the fridge and forgotten for a few more days.

3) Find it when scrounging for something to take to work for lunch, assume it’s still good and put the container of soup in a plastic bag to take with you.

4) Ask a child to take the container to the car for you because your hands are full and for goodness sakes, whatever you do, do NOT check to make sure that said child put the container on the passenger seat right side up.

5) Drive around for about 10 minutes. Smell something funny but disregard it. Reach over to pick up a CD from the passenger seat and put your hand in a mystery substance that makes you wonder who has been throwing up in your car since you parked it in your driveway last night.

6) Get a clue and figure out that your soup has spilled and that it is not as fresh as you had hoped. Inhale deeply and fill your lungs with regret.

7) Get a bunch of paper towels from the baby sitter and try to clean it up while driving, because you are late for work – AGAIN – and can’t possibly stop to clean it up properly.

8) Arrive at work. Allow the half-cleaned up, rotten soup to soak into your upholstery for at least 6 hours in the sun. Make sure the temperature reaches at least 70 degrees and that your windows and sun roof are tightly closed.

9) Leave work. Open the car and try not to vomit.

10) Drive home with the windows and sun roof open. Surely this will get the stink out, right?

11) Arrive home and leave your car with all the windows down and sun roof open to allow the airing out process to continue.

12) Allow it to rain for at least 15 minutes before you remember that your car windows are down and the sun roof is open. Run outside and sit on the soaking wet seat to turn the car on and close it up. Leave your wet pants on as a reminder not to be stupid.

13) Leave the car to sit overnight. This allows the half-cleaned up, rotten soup and rain water to thoroughly mix and ferment just the right amount.

14) In the morning, place two extremely cologned teenage boys in the backseat for an hour to an hour and a half.

15) VOILA! You are now the proud owner of a STINKY CAR! Brag to all your friends. You deserve every ounce of the praise they are sure to heap on you.

++++++++++++

Our neighbor is a vile and bitter old hag.

Yesterday evening (before the rains came with their sweet fermenting juices of joy) we were playing outside with The Baby. She has a little ridey scootey car that she loves and she wanted to take it outside and ride around. She rode for a little ways and then decided she wanted to walk. So she got off, took The Man and I (Me and The Man? Which is it? I pride myself on my grammar skills but I can never remember.) each by the hand and started walking. We made it to the corner, where we played with some acorns and practiced walking up and down hill at the edge of somebody’s yard, and we then persuaded her to turn around and head for home so we could check on the rice and because it looked like rain. As we were toddling back toward home, we realized that the car was not on the sidewalk where we had left it. Our first thought was that the wind had blown it down the street somewhere, but then we saw it on our neighbor’s tree lawn. Next to her garbage cans. The bitch went outside to take her trash out, saw the car sitting there and put it on the curb. Probably didn’t even bother to see if we were anywhere about (granted, we were out of a direct line of sight for perhaps all of three minutes). Just threw away a baby’s toy because she couldn’t stand its very existence. Or ours, apparently.

We opted not to confront her, because as The Man said, what would be the point? Since she was still in her front yard, I did make a point of responding to him by agreeing very loudly that yes, she is a bitch. But that’s not technically the same as confronting her about it, which would very likely have come to blows (I’m not sure who would have thrown the first punch/bitch slap/kick in the throat, but it would have been ugly either way).

So we are currently taking suggestions for ways to get revenge. I am thinking about lining up all kinds of toys just on our side of the property line. Or throwing away something of hers, like that goddamn deer made of logs. Or putting something nasty in her pool. Or pouring salt or gasoline or roundup on her garden - just as the plants are starting to produce and it’s too late in the year to plant anything more and even if she wanted to, her soil would now be toxic to plants, maybe (if we’re lucky) for years to come.

Any ideas?

++++++++++++

So* last weekend we took the Cub Scouts to go heron watching. I wasn’t sure if they would think it was cool to visit a heronry where hundreds of the birds all nest in one place, or if they would think I was lame for taking them to look at a bunch of dumb birds, but I took a chance. Lucky for me, they actually liked it. It was pretty impressive to see all the nests with big birds standing next to them. They weren’t sitting on the nests yet, because the males come first and spruce them up and then the females come and are mightily impressed by the nest-building skills of the males and go about choosing a mate. Evidently the thing that sends the female over the edge is when the male presents her with a stick. If she likes the stick, they do a little dance and then get their groove on. I had the privilege of seeing no less then three pairs of herons, um, grooving. I was hoping that none of the kids noticed, because I really didn’t want to have to explain that to other people’s children.

*Note to self: stop starting your paragraphs with the word “so”.

Because he is ever so helpful, The Man started the boys joking around about how they should try this method to impress the ladies on the playground. So now I have a bunch of boys planning to pick up a stick at recess and wave it enticingly in front of all the girls, saying, “Hey baby, how do you like my stick?” Since they are only in third grade, I imagine the most they’ll get will be some puzzled looks, or maybe one of the girls will decide to chase her admirer – which, I believe, is the third grade equivalent of an avian mating dance.

After we looked at the herons for far longer than I would have guessed they would want to, we took a hike on a nearby trail. We had trouble keeping them moving – being kids, they wanted to climb down every embankment, over every dead log and up every hill – and consequently decided to take the inner of the two loops, but hopefully we’ll get to go back and do the whole trail someday because we didn’t even get to the place called “Top O’ The World”, and how do you pass up something like that?

I think I am finally finding my rhythm with this whole leader thing. It’s only taken me three years to get to this point. I didn’t get stressed out, but I was able to corral the kids effectively, nobody fell into the water and I made sure they all had a good time.

I do think it was less stressful for me having The Man there. He’s not always able to be there for Cub Scout stuff, which is a shame because something about him makes me relaxed and more funny. But even without my total dependence upon my husband for performing even the most mundane tasks (making up ridiculous songs, doing comedy routines only we understand, doing interpretive dance to the ER theme song, mind blowing orgasms - you know, normal stuff like that), I feel like I am finally getting how this whole leader schtick works. And I think I might actually be pretty good at it.

At a meeting recently, some of the moms were standing around talking and it was agreed that nobody understood how I do everything I do: work, family, keeping house, being a leader, being in an orchestra, doing the occasional theater thing. I told them it was easy - I just do a half-assed job of all of them and never finish anything.

Piece of cake.


Reading:
Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince. I'd get a lot more of it read, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids. And my job. Stupid job.

Hearing:
The Man flipping channels.

Needing:
A glass of water.

In My Car CD Player:
OK Go. The new one. What's it called again?