Night Circus Teaser

As I was brushing the barn dirt from my rented dress, I asked Sean if they would be surprised to get a dress returned with that.  Hmm, they did send it to Kansas...  Everyone else had much more creative and elaborate dresses/costumes.  I didn't want to steal their thunder, although I did paint my fingernails for the first time since our wedding almost 16 years ago.  Baby steps here.

Real tea after 3pm?

A whole pot of black tea at 3:30pm only means one thing folks, it's time to rally for The Night Circus!  After months of planning and prep, everything is ready.  As the non-creative one I reserved the heaters and tables.  I'm a realist but I'd never stop the dreamers from dreaming.  A very talented group of artistic  people pull this off every year, always amazing.  Photos tomorrow!!

I'm into classic

I have some tabs open on my browser with items I've looked up this week.  I'm sensing a theme:

New Classic American Houses
Classic American Apparel
Classic Spaghetti Carbonara

I guess this means I'm not hip and trendy?  Nope, classic and boring!  I also have Arrested Development quotes open for our ongoing quote emails.  Feel free to sign up and figure out who we call Gangy these days.

Michael: Why haven't you talked to my brother, the new President of the company? 
Wayne Jarvis: We did earlier. He claims to know nothing. 
Michael: Well, that's not an act. He twice tried to heat up a Ding-Dong in a microwave while it was still in its tinfoil. 
Wayne Jarvis: Twice? 
Michael: Two times. 

One birthday?

Patrick and Emily have a long running debate about how many birthdays she has had.  She can't comprehend that she has had three birthdays and thus has to scream and cry back that she only has one birthday.  It is amazing how long they can carry on and this has been happening for months.  Every once in a while Patrick will bring up the topic to egg her on.  I'm at the stage where I have to laugh, otherwise I might go crazy.  Did I post about this a while ago? If so, that proves how crazy it already made me.

Speaking of go crazy or laugh, every time I go in the girls' room I think that we should move because it's just so awful and packed full.  Of course if I just cleaned it up that would save us a ton of money.  I tried to do that today.  The amount of toys and blankets and money bags they have in their beds is astonishing.  How anyone can sleep like that, I don't know.  Yes, I said bags of money.  How does Anna sleep at night?  On bags of money.

 How does tall Megan sleep in this nest???  Can we fit some more toys in there?

 The worst part is that I JUST cleaned this recently.  They also hate the cute quilts they have and instead want the fuzzy blankets that I put around the house on couches and chairs.  Such a great look.

 I hope they are embarrassed some day but I doubt it.

This is Anna's bag of money, keeps it under her blankets, down by her feet.  I'm sure this is to keep it from Patrick.  Meanwhile they have high shelves in their closets for that purpose...  Oh and be sure to notice the pencil markings on the wall.  I gave up, will just have to repaint someday in my free time.  It is worse on other walls and she has managed to hit almost every room in the house.  Move instead?

The Mindy Project

We've started catching up on all the shows we missed or got behind on in the fall (and last spring after Sean left).  My favorite new one is The Mindy Project, by Mindy Kaling, Indian gal from The Office, who also wrote that book "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and other concerns)".  Please pull up an episode on hulu.com or on demand or whatever else people are using these days.  Perhaps the funniest scene in modern television is the beginning of the episode "Danny Castaleno is my gynecologist", something like that.  I'm so helpful and specific, I suppose someone else would find a way to embed the exact scene in a blog post.  But now what fun would that be for you?  Don't you love the hunt?  Anyway, it starts off with Mindy trying to look sexy in her boyfriend's oxford shirt after spending the night.

In Pawnee Circle news, Patrick was sick again last night and thus I missed both kid-free days this week. The next two Fridays there is no preschool and the next two Mondays there is no Catholic school.  I find this cruel.  I also found way too much to keep me busy around the house today, to the point where I am wondering how I can justify ever going to the gym on my kid-free days.  Clearly I should be productive at home or else fall way behind.  Today I cleaned my car out which was horrifying and also a trip down memory lane.  I'm trying to pinpoint what emotion results from finding snacks in your car that you don't remember even buying. Patrick got involved too... had him scrub the floor mats out in the driveway and since it was 65 degrees and sunny, he used the hose to rinse.  And then he got himself all wet and asked to go put his swimsuit on.... I almost gave in until I spied the piles of snow around us.  I feel that would make me look like a bad mom.  Of course Megan thinks I am the worst mom because I am not helping her enough with her crazy math homework.  Hello, glass of wine right here after a long day (Sean working a shift now), pretty sure I don't want to think about that stuff and pretty sure she doesn't want my answers.

Ah, memory lane

Here is Sean's cousin's new blog about financial lessons in your 20s.  Wow, so good to read this and remember how far we've come.  Check it out:

http://brokemillennialsblog.wordpress.com

Meanwhile, we are living with a financial blessing/curse.  Sean can pretty much get on anytime to moonlight and it pays an hourly rate, in addition to the shifts he is scheduled to work.  So, it gets harder to justify certain things, like going out for a walk and leaving Sean with the kids when he could jump on and pay for upcoming taxes...  Sean is pretty good about not jumping on unless they really need his help at least.  Knowing what we know now about how easy it is for Sean to make money, I probably would have worked a lot less overtime during my Oxford years and instead enjoyed the freedom of those years without children.  Things you cannot possibly comprehend at the time....  Ah well, built some character, and a tiny little 401k plan for myself.  Teeny tiny.

Old stuff and weapons

I spent the weekend trying to get the house in order so I wouldn't waste my kid free time on Monday cleaning.  It seems I need that time for running errands, working out, getting a real shower, etc. and Sean never seems impressed when he comes home and the bed isn't even made.  Yep, no kids from 9-230 and still can't get that accomplished.  Anyway, so this week of course Patrick got sick and was home with me on Monday so I didn't run any errands, just stayed in.  I was forced to tackle the long dreaded tasks involving piles of random technology cords, old home movies, and old clothing bins.  Disturbing how many of those items we have, seems like I am always sorting though this stuff, keeps piling up.  I don't even shop that much, I don't know how this happens but I am determined to stop buying the kids clothes unless really necessary.  Uniforms for the Catholic school next year, cannot wait!  That should help a lot.  Megan's grade isn't required to wear uniforms but I've already talked to quite a few moms who are going to follow it.  It turns out we all hate morning clothing battles, so uniforms it is.  They are really cute though, plaid jumpers and skirts.  Megan is protesting but she'll come around.

During what should have been gym time yesterday (okay, I wasn't that sad to skip the gym), I managed to get the tax info together.  Trying not to be bitter about how much the deployment cost us and trying to focus on what should be a less horrifying tax bill.  Should be.  Our taxes are just complicated enough that I can't use regular tax software to get an estimate.  We have so few deductions, unlike those who deduct cat food for "pest control" and Sylvan tuition for their kids who are faux employees of their corporation (that would be employee enrichment of course).  So surely our taxes are easy for the professionals and they will get it done quickly, unless it's bad news, then we can wait a couple months...

This is ranking up there with most boring blog post ever, so I will end with a photo of something Patrick brought into the house the other day.  Anna got mad when she saw it and said, "hey, that's my swinging rock!"  Umm, time to check out the fort they made, I fear for what else they have stored in there.

Oh, I forgot I took a photo of this... yes, our photos.  Finally got the wall complete.  Bigger than I expected over the piano, whoops.

Okay, that is pretty blurry, from the phone camera.  I finally ordered more memory cards for my big camera since I don't have backup for this laptop yet and am hesitant to delete off the camera, so in the meantime I haven't been using the real camera.  I will also feel better once we get our old home movies converted to whatever media is most current.  We have one video tape in with those that has the Bills vs Oilers comeback game on it.... I asked Sean if he wanted to convert that too and he was considering it and didn't appreciate when I asked if the Oilers still existed.  FYI, no, they became the Tennessee Titans.  Well, well, that poses a problem for Sean who claims he wants to move to Nashville for access to pro football.  Would he cheer for the Titans??  Wait until he hears that they have late night cookie delivery there too!