Dec
1
Did you have a decent holiday week? I’m calling ours a success, despite at least fifty billion instances of having to tell the hyperactive children to calm the eff down and stop fighting/yelling/yodeling/tattling/running/pshew-pshew-pshewing/throwing/wrestling/burping. It’s extra hard to reinforce decent behavior when there are guests in the house, isn’t it? At least I always feel like I’m put under a parenting spotlight of some kind, and everything is made more difficult by the kids’ excitement at having their grandparents around. I found myself resorting to a lot of sotto voce offstage threats and surreptitious death glares, and I feel like I can actually see my bulging forehead stress-vein in the one family photo we got on Thanksgiving day:
(Obviously I missed the Plaid Memo.)
But all in all, it was good. Even with the bouts of restlessness, it was nice to live an obligation-free lifestyle for a few days. Back to the grind tomorrow, and I’m honestly both counting the minutes, and at the very same time, wishing the holiday could last just a little bit longer.
How was your Thanksgiving? Are you ready for the full-court-Christmas-press, or do you kind of wish you could hit fast-forward to January?
Nov
25
The kids are home from school until next Monday and my god, today has been a VERY long day. A while ago I posted something whiny on Twitter about the length of our Thanksgiving break and I got a response from someone, a new mom, who seemed a little … dismayed, I guess? that I was dreading the time off. Maybe she was staring down the grim barrel of the brutally endless-feeling newborn days and thinking, wait, this shit doesn’t get better? MULLIGAN. But I’m thinking most of you with school-age kids are with me on how a big shift in routine is just rough going, right? A school holiday isn’t like a weekend. It’s many consecutive hours in a row of children acting restless and obnoxious and generally making it really hard for me to do the crap I have to do because hi, I’m not on vacation. Plus JB’s parents are staying with us later this week so I feel like I’m caught in this ridiculous Möbius strip of trying to clean in preparation for visitors while the children systematically undo all of my efforts while adding a little extra clutter/dirt as they go.
In unrelated news I went through and organized my Stuff I Like page, which houses — wait for it — information about stuff I like. When I come across something I really feel like recommending, I post it on the sidebar for a while, then eventually move it to this page. Most items are things I bought from Amazon, and they include an affiliate link. I use any affiliate funds towards other things I buy from Amazon, which I sometimes recommend if they’re awesome enough. So basically it works like this:
I want to say I can hardly believe it’s almost Thanksgiving already, but I feel like I’ve been seeing Christmas decorations and trees shared on Instagram for at least two or three weeks now. Those must be fake trees, right? Because I’m pretty sure if I put one up in November I’d have a giant pile of brown needles by December 25th.
What are you doing for the holiday? JB’s brother and his wife are hosting the meal this year, and all I have to do is bring the rolls. No traveling! No cooking! NO DISHES.
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My product review site:
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