• I have a beast that moved into my chest last night. It’s 80 degrees outside and I’m coughing like it’s January. My usual October cough didn’t happen last year; I guess it was simply running six months late.
  • My lord, this child … I don’t want to complain about her. I don’t. But my God. On Monday we made what I thought would be a fun afternoon outing to Eckert’s Farm. We shared a lovely lunch at their restaurant, bought some locally-grown pork chops at their store, had a screaming hissy meltdown fit in the parking lot because someone dropped a penny under the truck and someone’s mother refused to shimmy under said truck and fetch the penny, and then bought some herb plants in their garden center while someone screamed and cried. The latter would be her, not me, but believe me, I wanted to. On the plus side, I think I understand those people who get married, have kids, and suddenly take up gardening after a lifetime of wimpering when their hands get dirty. When you’re that frustrated and angry, it helps to take a big fucking spike and destroy the roots of a decade’s worth of dead autumn mums.
  • And who said anger couldn’t be pretty, productive, and environmentally-friendly?
  • Today she broke my favorite coffee mug. My favorite, antique, too expensive to actually use coffee mug. The one with the Basset hound, and the lines on the inside that I used to guide me in adding sugar and milk. The week has been such that the accidental mug-breaking was damn near enough to make me start boarding school research. Over-reacting? Absolutely. But that’s what happens after hours of penny-crying on Monday and three hours of acting up today.
  • But today was good. We got our first Fair Shares order! OtherRobin and I will most likely be writing about it over at that foodie blog we write.
  • Speaking of food blogs, I’m now writing at Mad About Martha and several of the sites on the Well Fed Network. I’ve submitted pieces to Well Fed Network’s “Kids Cuisine” and “Paper Palate”, and I’ve got pieces in the works for “A Nice Cuppa” and “Growers and Grocers”. Martha’s about to get some treatment, too. I don’t know when any of them will be posted, but it won’t hurt you to check out the sites a few times. There’s good stuff.
  • And so I’m not just a moaning bitch who can’t handle parenthood and broken coffee mugs, I’ll end on a funny note. In a 24-hour period, I saw the three most awesome looks I’ve ever witnessed, and they were all in Prettytown. The first was a brown leather man. He looked to be 60, and he sported … not a mullet. And not a Mohawk. But an unholy hybrid of the two. It was a mullethawk! And it went halfway down his back! And it was bright blonde! I would have thought I was imagining the glory of it, except on of OtherRobin’s husbands friends has also seen him around town. Second, this morning I was having coffee (out, when I should have been home loving my mug because had I known …) and a woman walked in wearing head-to-toe white ruffles and a giant white straw hat with an 18″-long black ostrich feather. As if that wasn’t enough, when I went to the parking lot I spotted an older man, sitting in a lawn chair next to his car, wearing nothing but cargo shorts. I think he was tailgating.
  • There is no preschool tomorrow to save me from my mug-breaking, penny-pinching child tomorrow. Pray for us.