My new hot sweet love

I have fallen in love with a thing.  That thing is a French Press.

My coffee maker broke one morning when I was up at 5 am working and I have sent it off to get fixed.  No coffee at 5am = no good for me.  By mid afternoon that day, there was a French Press in my hot little hands. I’m not sure I have ever enjoyed coffee as much as I have this past week.

So in honor of my little lovely Frechie, here is a haiku, because who doesn’t like writing haiku’s?

Dawn sky breaks early

Slow thoughts dribble through my head

You are steaming strength

Write one, about anything, it’s fun.

Man jobs

Yeah…I don’t like to ask for help.  I also don’t like to ask men for help because really, I can do anything a man does (within physical reason).

I am actually on the fourth day of a toilet clog that I cannot for the life of me get out.  The questioning started out like this:  What’s in there?  Is it just poop?  Did you use a lot of toilet paper?  By day three I was asking:  What else did you put down there, a pony, a car, a stuffed animal?

Usually it kinda breaks up and then I can plunge it out no problem.  At this point in the post you are asking yourself, how does she know that?  Well people, I know that because I have a son that has clogged so many toilets in his lifetime that I can’t even count them on all my fingers and toes.

Needless to say, after another round of plunging, the snake and a conference call about “plunging procedure” for this particular toilet to Adam…we got it.

Oh yeah…the things I will not do.  Chop wood.  I tried that, with PJ watching and almost chopped my foot off.  I decided it wasn’t my thing.  And, change a flat, because really, I just don’t want to.

I am still waiting on my friend Erik.  Where the hell are you “pool boy” Erik???

Queen of the tundra

I have taken on a part time gig at the City of Lakes Loppet Foundation as their Sponsorship Coordinator for their big Loppet weekend in February as well as the Junior Olympics which they are going to host in March.  Needless to say, because of this, I have suddenly found myself on skis.

Every Tuesday night I go to a ski class.  So far it has been a bunch of dry land training, which I have no problem with.  Last night, due to the snow, I found myself on skis for the first time since I was 7.  The images of me laying in the snow crying because I was cold and frustrated all came flooding back.

With 33 years and only a pinch more patience than when I was 7, I plodded back and forth with no poles trying to get the gist of skate skiing.  At least I was laughing as I fell down instead of crying.  My plan is to complete the 33K Loppet race on February 6th.  I have a lot of work to do and honestly have no business doing it, but why the hell not?

Hey, if you ski, come on out and participate.  If you don’t come on out and watch.  There is something for everyone.

Buy the ticket…take the ride!

I saw that saying on a bumper sticker yesterday and totally love it.  It’s kinda how we roll over here.

Adam and his business partners have uprooted themselves and moved camp from Minneapolis to San Francisco to make some good inroads with their start up Evolve.

If you’re a gamer, sign up and give it a test drive.

Boo!

We talked him out of putting the “dead” baby in the bag.

She WAS a pirate a day ago.  By the end of the night, she took off the wig and was saying she was Becca.

Teen wolf out on the prowl.

King of Craft Beer!  He really just wanted to drink while he tried to track the kids trick or treating, so this worked out real nice like.

Happy Halloween.

Self Portrait

KP handed me this rolled up wad of paper to bring home from the bus stop this morning.

When the bus rolled away, I opened it up and found this.

KP’s six year old self portrait.

I love the fact he added in a devil like creature on his shirt and he gave himself blue eyes.  He is the only one of the three who has brown.

Dad

I swung by my dad’s tree yesterday to check and see if it was changing color.

It had.

As I looked at it and its color and looked around, it was so quiet.

No one was there.

It was the first time I had not seen anyone sitting on the bench or someone stretching or chatting or resting their bike on the trunk of the little tree.

A feeling of loneliness came over me.

The large gaping hole that he left, will never be filled.

Happy Friday

fRiDaY

I know this tells me something

While waiting for the bus, CT (the 10 year old boy) was telling me about the book that he was reading.  I wished I had a pen and paper to write down his description, because it was really something.  It was something about butts taking over the world.  In fact, the title of the book is The Day My Butt Went Psycho.

The same day, PJ (the 8 year old girl) , who can’t read much English yet, came home from school very excited with a book from the library called Black-eyed Suzie.  She thought this book was about the flower, Black Eyed Susans.  Once I read the back and the first page it was clearly about a 12 year old girl who is struggling with a sever case of mental illness.

This is not the first time that these two are so diametrically opposed and it will not be the last.

Good lord, what do the teen-age years look like?

Tiny treasures

This kid is nothing but a human wrecking ball working his way through life.

And when he takes the time to destroy and reconfigure something, then turns around, looks at you with those big brown eyes and says, “Mom, I made this for you!”

What can I say….I just melt.