mamajoan

So once again I have woefully failed to keep up on this journal. Alas. But, I return (however briefly?) to LJ with a big update, because we had a pretty big summer!

(Okay, the summer isn't technically over yet, but it sure kinda feels like it because this is the last full week. School starts up again next Wednesday.)

We had a shortened summer this year, because of the ridiculous winter weather that plagued our area this past Jan thru March. We had so many snow days to make up for that the school year had to be extended all the way to the very end of June. (One school in our town actually had to have a couple of school days on Saturdays, because they had a partial roof collapse due to snow buildup and lost extra days.) So, the last day of June was the last day of school. And because Labor Day is extra late on the calendar this year, the school committee decided to start school before Labor Day (for the first time in as long as I've been paying attention to the Somerville school calendar) which makes it feel like an earlier-than-usual start. So, there were only eight full weeks of summer vacation (plus one half-week at the beginning and one half-week at the end, i.e. next week) which really feels awfully short.

Isaac went away to sleepaway camp in Maine for two of those weeks, which was a pretty big deal -- his first time away for that long. Ruthie spent one of those weeks sleeping at

sandykidd's house and going to horseback riding camp with cousin Baz, so I had almost a whole week to myself (a workweek, alas, but I still enjoyed the quiet mornings and evenings). Isaac had a great time at camp. Several of his good friends were there, which definitely helped with the comfort factor, and he didn't hesitate at all in saying he wants to go again next year. Score! And Ruthie really enjoyed horse camp, but fortunately, did not come back home begging me to sign her up for regular horseback riding lessons...phew ;)

Anyway, after Isaac came back, both kids had a week of nothing scheduled (we cobbled together a combination of things for them to do while I was at work for that week) and then a week of day camp, and then we all set off on the biggest adventure yet -- a three-week family road trip! It was pretty insane. I shall have to do a separate post about it, so stay tuned. :)

Tonight was full of the things I love about Little League: drama, friendly camaraderie, excitement, laughter, suspense. Oh, and some torrential rain. ;)

It's the final championship round of playoffs, so there was much excitement already. To make things more interesting, we were under a tornado watch(!) and just at the moment the game was supposed to start, it started to rain. But it only rained for a minute and then the game began, with MUCH discussion of the rules about how many outs have to be recorded before the game counts, what happens if it starts to rain in the x inning, etc....

So it came to the 4th inning and Isaac's team was ahead by one run. We knew that the game would be official after 4 innings, so as soon as the 4th was done, we parents started jokingly doing a rain dance. Seconds later, the downpour began. I am not making this up. It rained heavily for several minutes and the umpires cleared the field, but then the rain let up and the game resumed. Then Isaac's team scored 7 more runs so they were ahead 10-2. The rain held off, and we finished the game (6 innings). The other team had beaten us soundly the previous night, so it was good to give them back a bit. ;)

Quite a few other kids from the teams that have already been eliminated, plus their parents, were there to watch the championship games. It was a pretty big crowd and a lot of enthusiasm. After the game was over, Isaac and a bunch of his friends from various other teams started playing pickle (a kid game that is kind of like tag, but with two "its" and a ball). It was a nice friendly atmosphere with parents sitting around chatting, kids playing, the concession stand doing a brisk business, and the gathering clouds turning an ominous yellow color. I ended up driving an extra kid home, and then a very quick stop at the grocery store, and it didn't rain any more, nor did I observe any tornado action, which is fine with me, thanks.

The sky was very dramatic, though. I didn't take any pictures because I didn't think it would be possible to convey the colors, the enormous shapes of the clouds, the way the sunlight was lighting the western clouds in one color palette and the eastern clouds in another...it was really amazing. I see that a lot of my friends did take pictures and have been posting them on FB all evening, so thanks for that. :) Now if only we could have a little bit of rain and thunderstorming, just to break the humidity, that would be great. Phew.

Final championship game tomorrow night!!

In my previous post I wrote about the logistics of last Thursday. It turned out fine, of course. I ended up going with the option that was less logistically complicated but that involved me not seeing the kids for almost a full 24 hours. The babysitter picked them up after school, and since it was a ridiculously hot day, they basically just hung around our house eating italian ice and playing on electronic devices. Which is pretty much what we would have done if I'd been home, except probably with ice cream. Meanwhile, I went to the chorus dress rehearsal, which was also fine.

I also said in my previous post that you shouldn't get me started on Saturday, so now of course I have to post about Saturday. ;) It was pretty ridiculous.

( all the gory details )

Last night seemed like the perfect opportunity to watch a Red Sox game for the first time this year. I settled in to watch a few innings while the kids were doing their "last few minutes of videogaming before bed." All was going pretty well until the Sox blew a one-run lead in the bottom of the ninth and Isaac suddenly decided to take an interest. I was like, "why must they go to extra innings on the first game I decide to watch this year?" and Isaac went "well I can't go to bed now -- I need to see how this turns out." I said, "but what if the game goes to 16 innings?" and he was like, "well, that's not very likely." HA!

So we watched a few more innings, and then in the bottom of the 12th, around 11:15pm, the power went out at part of Yankee Stadium and the umpires called a delay while they tried to get the lights back on. SERIOUSLY? At that point I was like, screw this, Friday or not the kids need their sleep. So I made them go to bed, which met with little resistance.

Then I came back downstairs and resumed watching the game...for another five innings or so. Around 1:30am when it hit the 17th inning, I said "screw this" again and went to bed. Dude, I know that a diehard fan stays till the bitter end, but I mean, it's the first week of April. If it were September (or even August) I would be there till the last pitch no matter what, but this time of year, forget it. I'm old and creaky. ;)

Anyway, I wake up this morning to see that the game ended up going 19 innings and was the longest game (in minutes, if not innings) in Red Sox history. And it went about another hour after I gave up. So I'm sure glad I didn't try to stick it out. I would have been sleeping on the couch!

I allllmost failed at the "post once a week" thing, but I'm squeaking in under the wire here. ;)

Tonight I made a vegetable stir-fry with tofu. I used to stir-fry a lot but hadn't done it in a while. In the intervening time, Ruthie seems to have become more picky :( and Isaac has become a lot more willing/interested in eating a variety of foods. (I almost wrote "in trying new foods," and that's true too, but veggie/tofu stir-fry doesn't really count as a new food, although it's a little different every time.)

This was my first time making a veggie stir-fry almost entirely with frozen vegetables rather than fresh. I did use a small onion, and a little bit of red pepper that was fresh; but most of the veggies were from a bag of Bird's Eye brand carrot/broccoli/cauliflower mix, and a separate bag of frozen pre-chopped green pepper. I was a little worried that the frozen veggies wouldn't work out, but they did. The mushy texture that you get from frozen veg isn't as noticeable when it's all mixed together with tofu and rice; and the flavor was good. I used garlic and a generous amount of ginger and a generous amount of Bragg's Liquid Aminos (which is like soy sauce but with a more complex flavor). It came out very well. I tossed in a handful of cashews at the end, which added a crunch and flavor that I liked, but Isaac didn't care for it much. He still ate two servings though. :) Ruthie had Rice Krispies. Sigh. Some day she'll again eat something I cook that isn't pasta...probably....

Anyway, but it's good to know that the frozen veg will work so nicely. I can see doing this more often. It did kind of take up the whole evening, but that was mostly because I was being lazy and slow about everything. If I buckled right down to chopping the onion and pressing the tofu and getting everything going, it could probably be a pretty quick meal.

The rice cooker makes things easier too, because I can just "set it and forget it." I have a pretty cheapo rice cooker, that can't handle much more than one cup of rice at a time or it boils over; and when it's done cooking it turns itself to what it calls the "keep-warm" setting, but what I call the "continue cooking the rice until it burns" setting. So I do have to pay enough attention to notice and turn it off (unplug it) when it switches to "warm" setting. But it's sure easier than making rice on the stovetop.

Ahh, all these modern conveniences! But they don't take away from the overall pleasure that is cooking. So it's all good.

In which I chronicle several experiences I've recently had in the shopping realm, which I thought you might find entertaining, edifying, thought-provoking, and/or diverting....

( The Saga of the Rug )

( Cards Against Computers )

( If The Pants Fit, Wear Them )

Isaac and his friend Ben have gotten into a lengthy game of sorts over the exchange of birthday presents. It is pretty funny.

It all started back in June when Isaac had a weekday-evening birthday celebration at the movie theater. Several of his friends didn't give him gifts because they forgot to bring them, or their parents didn't want them bringing the gift to school for fear it would get lost or damaged, etc. So the gifts trickled in over the next few weeks. I honestly lost track of who had and hadn't given Isaac a gift yet, and I think eventually he did too.

Then the new school year started, and one day I bumped into Ben's mom, who said something like "by the way, Ben keeps forgetting to give Isaac his gift, but we do have it for him." So I mentioned this to Isaac and told him that he should ask Ben about it. Isaac said, "but isn't it rude to ask someone for a present?" which made me think that I must be doing *something* right with this whole parenting thing. ♥ But I said I thought it was okay given the context.

So, a couple of days later, Isaac tells me that "Ben says that his mom gave you the present." I was like, uhh no she didn't. The next day, again, "Ben says that his mom really swears she gave it to you." At some point I was at the school and Ben actually came up to me himself and said the same thing -- that his mom had given the gift to me. I was quite sure she hadn't. Completely sure. 100% sure...but...well...wait a minute! What if she actually HAD given it to me and I tucked it into my purse and forgot about it? I was so confused.

And then a few days later Isaac announced that Ben had finally given him the present. WTF! So I was relieved that I hadn't had a total brain-fart, LOL.

Over the next few weeks Isaac kept telling me that Ben was still giving him crap about the present. Apparently Ben would come up to him and say stuff like "my mom says she gave your present to some random guy on the street who said he knew your grandma...." LOL

So when it came time for Ben's birthday party, Isaac knew exactly what he wanted to do. He got a card and wrote on it, "Dear Ben, my mom gave your present to your mom, Happy Birthday from Isaac." I had the present (tokens for the comic-book store) and gave it to Ben's mom, instructing her to pretend she didn't have it. She was confused -- apparently Ben hadn't told her about all this -- but agreed to go along.

A few days later I was at the school again and Isaac and Ben were together, and Isaac said "hey mom, Ben still hasn't gotten his present," and I said innocently "oh really? But I gave it to your dad and he put it in his pocket." Ben's dad hadn't heard any of my conversation with the mom, so I figured that would muddy the waters nicely. ;)

Last night, Isaac told me that Ben's mom must have finally decided to cough up the present, because apparently Ben came to school and said to Isaac, "so I was eating breakfast this morning and a portal opened up and some Comicazi gift tokens fell out." And Isaac concocted this whole story about his four-months-from-now self having built a time machine to come back in time and give Ben the present. Hilarious!

I love that Isaac and his friends are developing their own little in-jokes and pranks to play on each other. So fun. Can't wait to see what will happen on Isaac's next birthday. ;)

First day of third and sixth grade!! Pictures under the cut. :)

( you know you wanna clicky )

Ruthie is back from an extended 2-day, 2-night sleepover/play date with her cousin Baz. Thanks

sandykidd for keeping her fed and alive and such. ;) She was happy to snuggle with me at bedtime and then sacked out like whoa.

Isaac and I enjoyed the quiet time without her ;) and took the opportunity to watch some stuff she wouldn't want to watch, namely an episode of Buffy the first night and Sharknado 2 the second night. (We watched the first Sharknado last week and Ruthie hated it. To be honest, so did I, but Isaac was eager to see the sequel...man those movies are so unbelievably awful!) We even slept late these past two mornings, as it turns out that getting ready to go takes a lot less time with just the two of us. At one point I said, "you gotta admit, it's nice to do it this way once in a while for a change, but it would be so boring if there were no Ruthie in our life at all." Isaac grudgingly admitted this, and said to his sister, "Ruthie, you're annoying, but things would be more boring without you around." High fraternal praise indeed. ;)

Phew, our weekend of performances is over. It went really well! One stage show (Ruthie in Charlotte's Web) and three circus shows down, the kids had a great time and did a great job with all their parts. They're already talking about which circus acts they want to learn next year. The Openair Circus is such a fabulous thing. And Ruthie greatly enjoyed her time with Center Stage Somerville -- I'm super impressed that they managed to pull together a whole show in just two weeks of summer camp.

I performed too! I was practicing my stilting around the circus tent before the shows, and after about a zillion people asked me whether I was going to be in the show, I decided to give it a try. I asked the woman in charge of costuming whether there might be another costume for the beginner stilting act -- they were dressed up as ghost cows (don't ask). She was like, "of course!" and within moments she had magically produced a piece of white cloth, cut out a hole for my head, produced black cloth and cut out some random blobs, which she duct-taped to the white tunic: et voila, a cow costume. So I performed in the final two shows. I was probably the only beginning stilter whose age is in double digits but what the hey, it was fun and perhaps gave some other adults some ideas. I'm excited to continue practicing and maybe even be ready to stilt-walk in a parade with Ruthie at some point.

Anyway, so altogether a super fun but super tiring weekend. It may turn out to be a relief to get back to "normal life" starting tomorrow!....

(Cross-posted from Facebook, with some modifications.)

Day Three of the kids attending two different day-camps (after starting their summer with a week and a half of almost complete freedom). This is the first year I've been willing to try this kids-at-different-places thing, and it's mostly only because Isaac is old enough now to get himself places. Although he can't yet get himself to camp, he can at least leave the camp location and go hang out somewhere nearby, if I'm not able to get there in time.

Also, this week he has baseball practice most evenings (did I mention that he was selected for the summer all-star team?), and fortuitously the camp is right across the street from the baseball field, so that should work out nicely. On Monday he left camp by himself, went to the nearby pizza parlor and got a slice, then took himself to the practice. But then a sudden thunderstorm blew in after only about 20 minutes of practice, and the coaches decided to call it off rather than risk being out there on the field with metal baseball bats in the midst of lightning. Good call, coaches. Fortunately Ruthie and I were nearby and could come right over and retrieve Isaac. It didn't actually start raining until maybe 10-15 minutes after we got home, but then it was torrential downpours and major thunder/lightning sporadically for the rest of the night. (On Tuesday, yesterday, we tried all that again and it went well -- no thunderstorm, so the practice proceeded -- the only problem being that the pizza place was out of slices so Isaac was ravenous when Ruthie and I picked him up.)

But I digress. The point being, the different-camps thing. We're doing that for the next four weeks, with Ruthie going to one camp for two weeks and then another for the next two weeks, and Isaac staying at the same place the whole time. I'm hoping to work out the dropoff and pickup process to be a bit smoother than they were yesterday and this morning, but we'll see.

And Isaac has baseball practices or games every Tues/Thurs for the next several weeks, plus both he and Ruthie are doing various classes with the Open Air Circus two evenings per week, so it isn't like we're going to be any less busy now that school's out! Hoo boy. Wish us luck.

As usual I forgot to post here on his actual birthday, which was last Wednesday, but in any case -- Isaac turned 11! Somehow 11 feels so much older than 10, I dunno. I think I remember thinking that when he went from 7 to 8 also. That stuff is all so arbitrary and subjective, of course.

I keep remembering when I was first starting to think about doing this mom thing, and I commented that I couldn't imagine myself as the mom of a teenager, and a wise friend (though now I don't remember whom) pointed out that you don't just magically become the mom of some random teenager overnight, so to speak. ;) You grow into it, and when the time does come, it's not a random teenager but a kid whom you've molded and guided into the person that he/she is, a kid you have history with, a kid you know better than anyone else. Well, whoever it was said it more eloquently back then, but in any case, I found it comforting.

And it's certainly true, that I can't really imagine myself as the mom of a random 11-year-old, but as the mom of 11-year-old Isaac, well, that part is pretty easy. :) Although I love babies and miss having them around, and always thought that I'd find older kids less interesting overall ;) , I must say that I'm really enjoying Isaac at this age. He's old enough that we can share some jokes and conversations and experiences on a higher level; I can explain stuff and see him really getting it and integrating it into his worldview; we share a sense of humor. We've been able to enjoy watching some of my favorite movies and TV shows together (recently we watched Beetlejuice, Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog, and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and he's starting to get into Buffy!). There's a lot that he can do for himself (I have got to write another post about the gradual expansion of Isaac's independence in the world) but yet a lot that he still wants me to do, and he's still a "little kid" in some sweet ways, e.g. the way he doesn't like to go upstairs to his bedroom at night until Ruthie and I are going up to her room also. He's just the right size for me to hug, and he's still willing to let me hug him (and even hug me back, unless his friends are watching ;) ), and he cares about my opinion and mostly tries not to roll his eyes at how clueless I am. ;) He makes great jokes and commentary and unexpected connections that make me laugh or think. He came to me the other day with a question about something someone had said that he wanted to know "was this racist?" and we had a good conversation about racism and the subtleties of language. I love that stuff.

Just in the past couple of weeks he has started calling me "mom," and although he had been calling me "mommy" for a couple of years now, I still haven't really accepted that I'm not "mama" any more. I don't know why both kids suddenly switched from "mama" to "mommy" against my will...but now Isaac is going for "mom" and I'm having even more difficulty adjusting to that one! Sometimes I don't respond because it didn't register for me that he was calling me, heh. Somehow I feel like going from "mama" to "mommy" was something I could live with, but going from there to "mom" is really giving me those "oh no my baby is growing up" sad twinges!

(...And in this space I just typed a long digression about how the Little League playoff schedule interferes with Isaac's birthday every dang year and how I keep vowing to plan ahead for it better, but never seem to succeed. I removed that because it was kind of detracting from the "being Isaac's mom is awesome" theme of this post. :) The short version: it's hard to plan a birthday celebration at this time of year because the baseball schedule gets so complicated and last-minute-y. But somehow we'll figure something out.)

Anyway...so Isaac is eleven and that's pretty awesome. I don't mean to make it sound like he's the perfect kid...well maybe I do ;) but he isn't, of course, but he's pretty great. I'm in no rush for him to hit teenagerdom, but of course, it'll be here before we know it. I'm sure it will be fine...she said quixotically... ;)

( And now the obligatory picture :) )

Today after Isaac's Little League game, he and I were craving some Chinese food, but our usual place was too crowded, and the other issue was that Ruthie doesn't like Chinese. So we decided to go over to Porter Square, hit Panera for some plain buttered noodles (one of the very few things Ruthie will reliably eat *eyeroll*), and then go to a Chinese restaurant there, amusingly named "Wok 'n Roll."

But when we got there, I noticed the Indian restaurant next to the Chinese place and said to Isaac, "how about Indian instead?" and Isaac, whose Indian friend at school has apparently been talking up the joys of Indian food, agreed. Ruthie didn't care because she had her buttered noodles. So we went in and ordered samosas, aloo tikki, naan, poori, and saag paneer. (Ruthie: "What about scallion pancakes??" Me: "That's Chinese. This is Indian!" Ruthie: "Are we gonna get fortune cookies?" Me: *groan*)

And then a funny thing happened when the saag paneer arrived. Ruthie looked at it and went "ooh, that stuff is good, can I have some?" And proceeded to eat three helpings of it!! omgwtflol. Seriously, this is the kid who subsists mainly on plain noodles with butter, cereal with milk, and peanut-butter sandwiches (no jelly). She won't eat Chinese food. She won't eat PIZZA, for goodness sake. But she ate saag paneer with basmati rice and loved it! I'm guessing she would freak out if I told her she just basically ate a plateful of creamed spinach. ;)

Kids are so weird.

On how we're doing / what we've been up to the past few days:

* The kids enjoyed their sleepover with their cousin last week.
* The car got fixed, to the tune of over $500, sigh.
* Isaac's first Little League game of the year was scheduled for Saturday but got postponed by rain to Sunday. Then Sunday the field was still wet so they postponed it again. So they will play their first game tonight, weather permitting, knock on wood, etc.
* The Cambridge Community Chorus, including me, sang Beethoven's 9th in concert yesterday. I thought it went pretty well and am glad it's over.
* All that standing in place (for the concert and dress rehearsal before it, etc.) has really messed up my back. Am debating whether to tough it out until my chiropractor appointment on Friday, or try to get in sooner. This morning was particularly bad. When I can't even put my socks on, that's pretty pathetic.
* Today is the first day back to school for the kids after 10 days off, and boy were they grouchy about it. Okay, we were all grouchy. ;) Also I may fall asleep at my desk.
* Isaac's rash is still itchy but he says he has "gotten used to it" and refuses to use the prescription cream.
* Ruthie somehow managed to sit in a hive of mosquitoes(??) or something, and developed itchy bites all over her legs and butt and lower back. Her solution to the itchiness, because she doesn't like cortisone cream/calamine lotion, is to cover the bites with bandaids to prevent herself from scratching. We are now all out of bandaids and her lower body looks like a mummy project gone wrong. *eyeroll*

( The oh-so-fascinating minutiae of our weekend! )

So according to

hopemcg, LJ is cool again. I think my humor-meter was broken when I read that FB post from her, so I'm not really sure whether she was being sarcastic/humorous and/or just trying to say that she had made an LJ post and wanted people to read it. ;) But in any case, here I am once again saying that I intend to start posting on LJ again! Will it actually happen? I don't know.

But I did go reading through a bunch of my old LJ entries from late 2007 (I was looking for something in particular but then fell down the rabbit hole) and among other things that this made me think about, I was reminded that I really enjoy re-reading the stupid minutiae of my daily life from x years ago. And some day x years from now I'm going to be sad that I don't have any of those posts from now. So here's an apology to x-years-from-now-me in advance.

I started writing a bunch of long LJ posts in a Google Document with the intention of putting them here and post-dating them. Perhaps I'll even finish that project at some point.

Meanwhile, today's update: Yesterday we had no school because of a predicted snowstorm, which fizzled out. Instead of the 8-12 inches we were told to expect, we got about 2 inches. Of course, the kids were happy to have a day off school anyway, and they basically frittered away the day watching tv and playing video games. I got a bit of work done from home. In the afternoon I had to take them along to a medical appointment; also at the last minute we ended up with one of Isaac's friends coming along, because his parents had to take their elderly cat to the vet to be put to sleep. Fortunately my mom was able to meet us and watch over the kids while I had my appointment, and then we had a whole clusterf*ck of taking Ruthie to Girl Scouts (I should post here about Ruthie's Girl Scouting experience at some point) and not knowing what to do with the boys during that, all of which turned out fairly badly, alas. I blame the weather. Stupid weather.

Today we're back at school and work, thank goodness. It's so cold outside (9 degrees F this morning when I dropped the kids off) that I think Isaac will probably not be able to have his fencing afterschool club, because they usually walk there. I think it's too cold for kids to go out according to school department rules. Alas. Isaac really seems to like fencing (though, to be fair, he likes basically every sport there is).

Ruthie has been complaining of stomachaches and headaches on and off for several days now. I can't figure out whether she's really sick, or having random pains of the type that we adults tend to just ignore, or fishing for attention, or what. She hasn't been eating much -- claiming to feel nauseated, and that her stomach hurts more after she eats -- and has a little bit of a runny nose and cough, but otherwise no other apparent symptoms, so who knows.

And it's supposed to continue being cold for at least the next week or so. Temps in the teens and maybe low 20s are the best we can hope for, apparently. Uggghhhh. I hate winter. :P

( We went to the mall... )

Part of this post was originally a Facebook status, and the rest of it was going to be another FB status but then I decided it was too long. I also have a whole bunch of half-written posts that I need to get up here eventually....

First day of second and fifth grade! (also we painted our car again :) )

First Day of School

OMG! Can you believe it? Isaac is ten years old! *faints*

Current Mood: enthralled

Lately I find myself doing a lot of "day in the life" type posts on Facebook, and sometimes they can get to the length of the "day in the life" LJ posts that I used to do, so I thought, maybe once in a while I'll just cross-post something. Because part of what I've always valued about my "day in the life" posts is the ability to go back months or years later and re-read, and go, "oh yeah, that," or "wow, I don't remember that at all." And you can't really do that on FB because it sucks at archiving and browsing old stuff.

So something I've posted about several times recently on FB is how Ruthie has been wearing her hair very short for a while now and often gets mistaken for a boy. It doesn't bother her, which I'm glad about. She usually just corrects the person very matter-of-factly. The short hair looks really good on her and she likes it so she isn't going to let anyone spoil that for her! Meanwhile Isaac, until recently, had gotten quite shaggy and was mistaken for a girl at least once recently. He got a haircut this past weekend so I think that will slow down the gender confusion, although his hair is still longer than a "typical" boy cut, and incidentally longer than his sister's hair too. I think it's funny that up until this last haircut the longest-haired people in our family were Isaac and my brother. Now Isaac's and mine are probably about equal, and Ruthie's is shorter than both of us.

Anyway, with all of that as prologue, here's the "day in the life" that I posted to FB tonight:

Ruthie and I stumbled upon a little festival at Whole Foods while Isaac was having baseball practice. I guess they were celebrating 5 years since that Whole Foods opened (which makes me feel old because I remember it) and they had tents with free food, pony rides, and so forth. It was fun. Ruthie got to see a pony pooping in graphic detail, which made quite an impression. ;)

Just as it was about to be Ruthie's turn, both ponies pulled loose from their handlers and trotted away across the parking lot. It turned out that they were freaked by the drums played by the live band, which had just started playing. The band stopped playing and the ponies calmed down and Ruthie got her ride.

We loaded up on free samples (I had seconds of the apple pie) and then went into the store to shop. Inside, they had more free samples, and the lady giving out tastes of bread said "Your son has very nice manners" and Ruthie said cheerily "Actually I'm a girl" and the lady was very embarrassed. Ruthie was even wearing a skirt! Although it was hard to see under her long shirt, and she was also wearing her baseball cap. I wish people wouldn't feel embarrassed for making that mistake. It's understandable and not a big deal, or at least, it shouldn't be. Then I feel bad for their embarrassment, so I try to reassure them, and I end up almost sort of apologizing for Ruthie being a girl, LOL, WTF.

Then we retrieved Isaac and came home, and Isaac wanted to watch a funny YouTube video he had seen at school, and one thing led to another, next thing you know I'm explaining what a condom is. Ruthie: "I'm never wearing one of those!! 'Cause I'm a girl!"

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mamajoan

March 2026

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Entries tagged with isaac

Another summer comes and goes too fast

A dramatic Little League game, and weather

Days that are crazed

Last night's ridiculous game

Food experimentation

Shopping Adventures

Birthday present shenanigans

First day of school

Got my girl back

We rocked the house(s)

Summer begins

Isaac is eleven!

Feeding kids is an endless adventure

A few bullet points

Weekend report

This thing again

Tactical error