Two of my three four-year-olds went to bed Wednesday night crying. Why? Because they had wet socks over both of their hands, rendering their thumbs unsuckable. The torture of trying to go to sleep without their thumbs in their mouths was extreme. And I was responsible for their anguish.
In my defense, I was only following doctor’s orders. You see, on November 10th, sixteen full days before, the boys swam in an overly chlorinated hot tub. Read More…
It all comes down to cookies. The chocolate wafer kind, mint-flavored with a delicate chocolate coating and sealed in a rectangular green box. The world knows them as Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies. I know them as my nemesis.
When I was in Girl Scouts, I dreaded going door-to-door in the Girl Scout’s famous annual fundraiser. I had to knock on the door of someone I didn’t know, interrupting that stranger to ask him or her to peruse my list of cookies and order some, and then I had to go back a few weeks later, lugging around stacks of cookie boxes that my mother had taped together and labeled in our garage, and then they had to give me money. The act of just knocking took everything I had. Read More…
A pink tent sprouted in my house last weekend. It was no accidental sprouting, though. I planted the thing myself. It was a tent from San Diego’s 2007 Breast Cancer 3-Day walk that I’d procured from my sister* to give my boys a chance to sleep in a tent like the one I’ll be sleeping in for the next two nights as part of the 2009 Breast Cancer 3-Day walk. My triplet boys were giddy with the novelty of camping in the living room.
And being the complete idiot that I am, I fed their hysterical state with sugar in the form of s’mores. Hey, the perils of a sugar-induced human tornado aside, s’mores are an essential part of camping and could not be omitted from this living room camping extravaganza, right? Read More…
A big HEY! to Ms. Miller’s students! Thanks so much for a fun ‘virtual visit.’ I love that technology made it possible for us to get together and talk books.
Here are links to those blog posts I told you about:
“Odd” Jobs (or, I Was a Pro Video Game Player)
“Behind-the-Books” blog series (with the stories about things in HONK IF YOU HATE ME and BIG MOUTH)
Thanks again, for the visit and the awesome photo of you all reading HONK! HAPPY READING!
Synergy is my word for Monday. It seems everything my three four-year-olds and I did today led naturally to the next thing while fortuitously tapping into books we’ve been reading. I love it when that happens. Not that the day started out that way. Our day started out with errands. Blah.
But when we found ourselves looking for a park to break up the blahness of driving from point A to point B to point C, we found adventure. Of course. That’s what we do. And today, my sons actively asked for it. “Let’s find adventure,” my firstborn said. “Let’s drive that way and explore.” Yes sir! I pointed the car westward, just as he’d pointed, away from Downtown San Diego’s cruise ship terminal where we’d met my mom for a sweatshirt hand-off and onward to adventure.
We found it within minutes. Read More…
If you set out in search of adventure, you will find it. That’s what I told my sons last week when we boarded the trolley bound for San Diego State University. I had no idea what we’d do on campus beyond buy a frozen yogurt, but we went anyway. We’d spent time the previous week on UCSD’s gorgeous campus, and I’d realized that I had to show my boys an equally valuable but far less expensive college campus. How did I come to realize that? By listening to my three sons, who should start college at the same time, telling their daddy that they were all going to attend UCSD when they got old enough for college so that they could go to school with the talking trees. *gulp* Read More…
I couldn’t help but be skinnier now. I have just emerged from three weeks of being buried by a load of projects and activities that brought me eye-level with the ground. Between Halloween, Breast Cancer 3-Day fundraising and training, a flood of freelance editing jobs, preparation for the La Jolla Writers Conference, attending the three-day conference, writing my own fiction projects, and being sick enough to loose eight pounds in a week, I’ve been squooshed flat. Oh yeah, and then there were three four-year-old boys doing that war dance around my battered body.
HOWEVER. I raised all the money I pledged to raise for the Breast Cancer 3-Day walk, I’ve completed the La Jolla Writers Conference, and I’ve gotten well and started eating like a human being again. That just leaves Read More…
As if we didn’t know it, our kids have proven once again that they are amazing. For five of the past seven weekends, various combinations of the triplets belonging to the five moms on my Breast Cancer 3-Day walking team hosted our Pink Lemonade Project lemonade stand at various locations around San Diego. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that the kids hosted the stands—these kids really did a very large amount of the serving, they took the money and gave change, they explained our mission to their ‘customers’, they handed out flyers, and they advertised by wearing shirts that said “Pink Lemonade Project” and “Triplets Against Cancer” and marching around in packs holding signs that read, “Buy Our Lemonade.” Sure, these kids logged a lot of play time, but it was well-earned. As of Sunday, the grand total of our lemonade stand donations came to $1,372.00. Read More…
As with my wedding anniversary and the birthdays of every person I know except my three sons, I usually forget my birthday. You’d think that with it being the day after Halloween, I’d remember, but I don’t. Luckily, my friends and family do remember it, and this year three people—my parents and my friend since junior high, Tara—decided that what I’d probably want more than anything else on my birthday was cash . . . for my Breast Cancer 3-Day fundraising. They were right! With their donations plus the money that my husband, our three four-year-olds, and I made at our fifth Pink Lemonade Project lemonade stand today, I’VE REACHED MY GOAL! That’s $2,322 for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, to be used for breast cancer research, education, screening, and treatment. Hurrah!!!!
To celebrate, I ate Milk Chocolate Bordeaux chocolates from See’s Candies this afternoon.
Now that’s what I call a good birthday.