I've Got Christmas Gift Ideas! And Neither of Them Contain Coffee or Alcohol!

I don't usually use my blog to hawk wares, but I just reviewed two products over on my other blog that are worth mentioning here. One is a toy for kids, and one is a toy for adults. Although if you're like me, you'll want to play with both of them.

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For the past few months my nine-year-old had been bugging me to make her a toy she saw at a birthday party awhile back. It consisted of two, 2-liter soda bottles joined together at their necks and containing colored water, and when the bottles were flipped one way or another the liquid would create a tornado effect. The ones she had seen were joined by a plastic sleeve made especially for this purpose, but she had been told (by a very "helpful" parent at the party) that the same thing could be achieved by using duct tape to join the two bottles. So go home, he told her, go home and tell your mom to get cracking on that craft in all that free time of hers...Read more...


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I'm the gadget nut in this family. While my husband would be content to use a rotary-dial phone and a TV that needs to be hand-cranked, I have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning unless I know that there is some electronic device waiting to be purchased that will make my day more exciting. I've got my eyes set on a one-cup coffeemaker (even though we already have a grind-and-brew and an espresso machine fighting for space on our counter) and my husband has noticed that I make odd slurping noises whenever an iPhone commercial flashes on the TV screen...Read More...

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I Wish Someone In This House Would Get a Record Deal So I Could Afford To Remodel My Kitchen

Somehow, in between working a full time job, taking out the trash, getting the kids ready for school and keeping his wife happy, my husband managed to record a CD! Rigel and his band, Nine2Midnight, spent countless hours and subjected themselves to hundreds of beers to get some of their songs onto vinyl (or plastic, or whatever CDs are made out of. Whalebone? The ashes of dead rock stars?) Obviously I'm partial, but I think they sound awesome - even though they ignored my requests to cover a Beyoncé song.

They even have a MySpace page, which apparently is what all the young kids are doing these days to pimp their music. Of course, this all just means they're one step closer to spandex jumpsuits, out-of-control drug habits and tour buses filled with slutty groupies. Which is all fine as long Rigel still gets up to take the kids to school.

Meanwhile, things aren't going too swell for Kira and Kiyomi's band, Off Limits. Their keyboard player quit a few weeks ago in a very dramatic Diana-Ross-leaves-the-Supremes fashion minutes before their first show. The way it went down was, they were finishing up a music and songwriting class they'd been taking together and were preparing to perform a song they'd written. All us parents were waiting outside, talking about what kinds of vacation homes and sports cars we were going to buy with our kids' money once they became famous, when the keyboard player stormed out and announced that she was quitting the band for two years, in her words, "Until Kiyomi grows up."

Now, you'd think Kiyomi would take offense with this, but she's actually been strangely eager to tell the story and has been repeating it to anyone who'll listen, adding some dramatic flourishes for effect. "So, she quit the band and said she wasn't coming back 'until I grow up.' Until I grow up! How do ya like that? She's giving me two years to grow up! Why two years? Why not four? I'll be eleven by then for goodness sakes! Am I supposed to wait around?" She's usually got her hands motioning wildly and flipping her hair by the time she finishes the story, and I can just picture her in ten years, telling the story to Rolling Stone while she's got a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and flashing her tattoo that says "I'm All Grown Up."

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Sweatpantsmom Is Getting Her Blogging Back On.

I remember when I first started this blog, and how I was diligently posting every single day. That went on for awhile and I was so proud of myself, all the intricacies of my life I was laying out for everyone to see! How wonderfully interesting my mundane comings and goings were! How amusing every word and cough and burp that came out of my children sounded! I just imagined how the entire world was waiting, waiting every day for my next entry and all the fascinating details I would divulge.

Well, that wasn't the case.

So, I started posting less, and that seemed to be fine. The earth still spun on its axis, and the universe was still intact without hearing about my latest supermarket purchase, or how hot my coffee was that morning.

And then I started posting even less, mainly because I started getting busier. There were school projects, and freelance jobs and family commitments and posting to my blog seemed of slightly less priority than sleeping or using the extra few minutes to shower or shave my armpits.

Then along came this year, with the supreme time-sucker that is middle school, and writing for that other blog, and researching stories for that same blog, and freelance jobs and sick kids and odd schedules. And you know what? My pits still weren't shaved.

Add to that not having time to actually read anyone else's blog. Who had a baby? Who moved to a tropical island? Who won the Nobel Prize? Did anyone win the lottery? And if so, are we related?

It's like I have no idea what's going on in my neighborhood because I haven't had time to walk out my front door. (Front door. See? In the old days that would have been an entire blog post right there.)

And I'm looking back over my posts for the past few months and realizing that there are huge gaps of time in there, tons of events that aren't written about here. Not that anyone else cares, but I don't have a record of them anywhere, and that was the great thing about blogging: a nice chronicle of what had happened in my life, my husband's life, my girls' lives - our lives.

This sucks.

So be warned that I'm going to go back to blogging more often, about the temperature of my coffee and my shopping adventures and the latest unbelievably cute thing my kid said this morning and the freaky mom I sat next to at the PTA meeting who was wearing her pajama bottoms underneath a poncho. That's right - I said poncho.

I'm going to write about it all.

Not so much for you, but for me.

But I'm hoping you'll keep reading. I promise no photos of my pits.

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