Momnesia

"Mmm. I love edamame," I coo over the Pad Thai I made. I know it isn't a traditional ingredient - but it sure is good.

"Let me try," Scott says, and pops one in his mouth. "Mmm. Yum."

I go back to stirring.

"Hey, what's edamame?" He asks.

"Japanese soybeans. They serve them in those little green pods in Japanese restaurants," I answer.

"Oh... Why don't they call it something in Japanese, then?" He asks, in complete seriousness.

I can't help but laugh: "'Edamame' IS Japanese, you goober!"

To his credit, he grinned and shook his head at himself.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

"Guess what? I dream dat the all da Toyland and all da Candyland wuz not cool. Dey was UNcool. Dey was RUINED. An' only one fing will get dem change back: I hafta get da RING."

... "Um, what ring, Doodle?"

"Da ring das magic."

I swear she didn't watch "Lord of the Rings."

"What does the ring look like?"

"Iss pink an' yellow. An iss in da apricorn."

"What apricorn?" (She means acorn, and she really means pecans from the tree in our yard... By the way, anyone want some pecans?)

"Da one on da tree?"

"What tree?"

"Da Chrissmass tree."

"And what happens with the ring?"

"Wull, da prince got to get da ring an' wear it. Den da Toyland an' da Candyland will be back to normal! Da king wants da ring, but he say 'No you can't have it!'"

"Den da mice caught Alice and took her away. An' I said, 'Gib her back! I don't want her to get a stone. Just gib her back!'"

"Den brrrrring! Da spell is gone! An' all da toys and all da candy is back to normal. Den it was just a dream, but sumping was up."

"What was up, Doodle?"

"It was da friends! Da helper friends from Toyland! Dey're in my bedroom, an' iss NOT a dream! I wuz da HERO!"

Well, Hollywood, can you do better than that?


Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Augusta, GA. - I have a lot of teachers and teachers-to-be in my extended family. And every year they get a treasure trove of sweet little gifts from their students.

But there's only so much coffee a teacher can drink, and only so many places to put apple-themed accessories. So this year, consider the following ideas for your child's teacher(s):

1. Thank You Notes - a sincere handwritten note from your child is worth its weight in coffee mugs.

2. DIY Coupons: Offer to share your talents/expertise with the class! Teachers are always looking for ways to work with parents and use your collective skills to educate their classes.

3. Donations in a Teacher's Name: If your child's teacher has had a challenge - death in the family - or a special cause - animal rescue - this year, make a donation in that teacher's name to an appropriate organization (American Cancer Society, Humane Society).

4. Subject-specific memberships or donations - Say your child's teacher specializes in English. It will be appreciated if the donation you make is to a literacy program. Or if you were to pay for a quality book-of-the-month club. Or pay their union dues. Anything that makes sense for them, and that makes that teacher's life a little easier.

5. Gift Certificates - Teachers spend so much of their person money on classroom supplies. How about a gift certificate to an office-supply store?

6. Gift Certificates, part deux - Pamper your child's 10-hour-a-day on-their-feet teachers with gift certificates for pedicures, for dinner, or for groceries. After all, they didn't get into the profession for the money.

7. Teacher Supply Box - Fill a festive box with any age-appropriate combination of anti-bacterial soap, tissues, pens, pencils, markers, glue, tape, scissors, air fresheners, fans, notepads, construction paper, folders, lined writing paper, binders, paper towels, chalk, dry erase markers, graphing paper, burnable CDs, flash or thumb drives, software, memory sticks, a backup mouse or keyboard, disposable cameras ... whatever is age-appropriate or discipline-specific.


8. Jar of Treat - nothing like a snacky-snack!

9. Elementary/Middle School: Board Games - Again, look for age-appropriate and discipline-specific games. Economics? Choose monopoly. Language Arts? That's Scrabble or Yahtzee. Sciences? For younger kids, there's Totally Gross. Art? Perhaps Pictionary.

10. Donate Your Used Equipment - Look around the house. Do you have an old boombox, computer, television, computer peripherals, camera, clothing, art supplies, board games, DVDs, books, or other items that are still in usable condition? I'll bet your child's teacher can make use of it in her classroom. Consider donating to your child's school before you send your things to the trash heap.

Augusta, Ga. - Emmie has managed to guilt me into getting out of my sickbed and doing holiday stuff downtown.

We saw the Christmas parade, stopped by the Commons, and were just getting to The Boll Weevil for dinner, when Emmie spotted someone she had not yet convinced to join her cult.

"Hullo," she called, and waved cheerfully.

"Hello," the nice couple answered.

"Wuss yer name?" Emmie asked.

"Michelle," she answered.

"Dass a nice name," Emmie replied. "My name is EmersonReneeMcGowenHudson."

"It's nice to meet you," the woman laughed.

"Dass a lubblee shirt you weareend," Emmie gushed, and I couldn't help bursting into laughter.

"Jeez, Emmie, are you running for office?"

"No, I not runneend." She shrugged. "I juss walkeend."

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Augusta, Ga. - Scott came into the bedroom where I was groaning in general funkitude. I'm sick, and whiny. He had an apprehensive look on his face. Oh, god. What now?

"I just wanted to tell you that we'll be getting the daily again," he said, slowly.

We took the paper for a while, against my better judgement, and there wasn't a month that went by when we didn't have problems. We cancelled it several years ago when we couldn't get the issues to actually show up - or we'd get partial issues, or get them in the afternoon, or any number of ridiculous problems.

He put up his hand when I rose from my sickbed with murder in my eyes.

"They called yesterday and asked if we wanted to take it again. I said no, but they said that we had temporarily suspended it, but that still had a month left that we had pre-paid for. So I told them to send it for a month, and then end it."

... I was incredulous. First of all, I called to cancel, not suspend. Second, when I called to cancel the subscription, why didn't they inform me of my account balance? And third, why are they just now calling - TWO YEARS LATER?!

This is why the most workable model of the future is the free weekly paper - as demonstrated by the model's consistent growth in readership over the last 20 years.

As the news cycle speeds up, people get their wire stories from the web. They get their in-depth local stories from the weeklies. That leaves the daily print publications in no-man's land.

And after this month is up, I hope they don't dare call here again.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

I'm feverish, sick, coughing my guts out, so Scott went to the drugstore for me. Here was the list I gave him:

- Mucinex
- Emergen-c (or similar, in pill form, no drinky)
- Citrus-flavored cough lozenges
- vanilla ice cream with some kind of chocolate in it (...what?! My throat hurts...)

Anyway, I knew when he left that it would be a disaster. It always is, despite his honest efforts. After all, this is the man who once came back from the grocery store and claimed that he couldn't find any crackers.

But hope springs eternal, and I felt just bad enough to chance it. After all, he had accomplished so much, so well, today, including having a lovely roast dinner ready when I got home. Still, I wrote him a list before he went.

I was so happy to see him when he came home and laid his purchases on the bed:
- honey lemon cough drops
- a Cinderella toothbrush for Emerson

And CVS was so happy to have the additional money that I spent when I went to the store my damn self.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Augusta, Ga - I am enjoying a raging cold. Fever, coughing, stuffy nose... Oh, you know the whole dang NyQuil commercial.

But I think Emmie's school might have taken the swine flu scare a little too seriously...

"Mama, you sick?" Emmie asks, then places her hand on my forehead. An expression of great concern furrows her brow. "Ohhh, you got a feeber."

"Yeah," I choke out, and then cough up a kidney. "Mama's not feeling too good."

I start to lean in for a mooch - they always make me feel better - when she shrieks in terror, splitting my head in two.

"What on earth is the matter?!"

"You goeend gib me yer GERMS!"

She's right. And I don't want her to get sick. But I can't resist messing with her.

"Bluuuuugh," I moan, eyes crazy and arms out. "I am the germ monsterrrrrr."

She shrieks and literally runs across the house to get away from me.

"Okay, I was just joking," I said.

She comes out of her hiding place, and I notice that her shirt is dirty.

"Honey, it's time to put those clothes in the laundry," I say. "Let me untie the bow."

"NO!" she edges away from me. "You GOEEND get yer GERMS on me!"

"Dude! I won't touch you, I promise! Just the shirt."

We get her out of her clothes, and then she edges around me, cautiously, holding her clothes out in front her like a shield.

"You know, it's not like I'm going to set you on fire," I sigh. I really did want that mooch.

Emmie shakes her curls and then whispers diabolically: "You nebber know, Mama. You nebber know."

Scott and I are getting ready to take the car to the shop.

"What's the fastest way?" I ask. He tells me. It requires me to turn left out of our driveway, from which one cannot see over the hill to the right. I'm not about to get broadsided, and I almost never turn left when I'm leaving.

"Uh-uh," I say, using married-people shorthand. "And you better not either, with Emmie in the car."

"Honey!" He sighs, rolling up his car window from the driver's seat of the be-stickered WGAC news car. "I'm a professional."

"You're not a professional DRIVER!"

Augusta, Ga. - While Emerson is visiting with my family, Scott and I take the opportunity to get some things done around the house. I wrap gifts, do dishes and laundry, re-purpose some leftover turkey into a turkey-cranberry-almond salad, and bake cookies. Scott tackles the lawn, the storage shed, and some other manly outdoorsy kinds of things.

Triumphantly, I hold up a perfectly baked chocolate chip cookie. But he scrunches his nose like something smells bad.

"What's wrong?"

"You're baking, I'm working in the yard. it's almost as if we're..."

"Married?" I finish for him.

He shakes his head and grins, faking a shudder of disgust.

I resist the urge to throw a cookie at his head. After all, I hate yard work.

Augusta, Ga. - Serving utensils. Weeks of careful menu preparation for a gathering that grew overnight from 8 to 13, and it will all be foiled by an inability to get food from cooking container to plate.

"Crap!" I said to my husband. "It was the ONE thing I kept reminding myself to do: Buy the frickin' serving utensils that go with our silverware."

"I'm sure we can find something," he said, mildly amused.

"Well, there's these that were a wedding gift, but I'm just not going to have the time to polish silverware."

Google to the rescue! (Hi, Rupert Murdoch. Hi, Bing. Not falling for your evil plan)

"It says that we boil this together," Scott says, dumping baking soda and salt on the counter, then filling a pot with water.

He stops, his heinie sticking out of a cabinet: "Uh oh."

"What?"

"Where's the foil?"

"Uhhh..."

"It needs the aluminum foil for the elec- elect- for the thing to happen."

Crap. We search. No foil. We think. Heh. Great, now the kitchen is filled with smoke. I begin to pout a little.

"HEY!" I exclaim, and begin to frantically search the kitchen. "How about this?"

Yes. We crumpled a beer can in with this concoction, set it to boil, and laughed heartily. No WAY this was going to work! But it was too funny not to try.

Before: The never-before-polished wedding silver












After: A husband who may be impossible to live with for at least three days.





Do ya see Sir Smug-a-lot there? Yeah, fine, genius-boy. Your plan worked. But it was MY beer can idea!

AUGUSTA, GA. - We're looking over the December issue of Metro Augusta Parent before it goes to press. The cover shot is of a bunch of kids playing with one of Parent's toy picks of the year: Elmo's Tickle Hands.

These furry gloves look just like Elmo's. Put them on, pop the DVD into your player, and put your hands in the air to feel them shake & move whenever Elmo says "Tickle Hand Groove!"    "Wait, they vibrate?" I asked. "Yup," H.O. answered. "Um... someone's going to come up with something dirty to do with these," I mutter, disconcerted. "Oh, you think?" H.O. shot back. "So... we're putting marital aids on the cover now?" I asked A.C. "What? How do you think they got kids in the first place?" she deadpanned.

Augusta, Ga. - From our graphics dept. Only $19.95.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

"Mama, dat cloud machine is makin' too many clouds today."

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Augusta, Ga. - Emmie asked me a question about the sun today, which lead to a discussion on gravity, which lead to some paper plates being thrown across the room (made sense at the time).

Suddenly, she said something genius: "Iss like da plate is da earf, and DAT plate is da moon," she said when one plate did a loop-dee-loop around the other.

"Emmie, you are so smart! How did you get to be so smart?!" I cooed.

"Wull," she shrugged. "I juss fink about smart fings."

I'll have to try that.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Augusta, Ga. - It's a good thing that Emmie was engrossed in the idea that I might not take her to see the gingerbread village at the Augusta Museum of History. She didn't hear the two customers at the Deans Bridge Road Wal-Mart cussing each other out over who's cart had accidentally knocked into the other.

It's a good thing that Emmie was fascinated by the tiny Etch-a-Sketches on display at the checkout stand, so she didn't see the brief but tense standoff between a customer and a sales associate who asked her to abide by the 20 Items or Less Rule.

And it's a good thing the Salvation Army bell ringers were outside to remind me that not everyone is out for number one. Emmie gave them every dime in my pocket, and I was grateful to them for the opportunity. AND they let her ring the bell - bonus!

Thank you, Salvation Army - and thank you, Wal-Mart (ahem... Target...) for letting them collect for the needy on your property.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Nope. It's just Emmie.

"Honey, get off that and let's go, please."

"Mama!" She scoffs. "I'm tryeend to breetett da world!"

Oh. My bad.

"There aren't any aliens around, darling."

"Dat's cause dey're in space."

"But we're on earth."

"But dey're goeend be here."

"Not today."

"Yeahuh!" she squeals.

"Honey, if aliens reach earth by tomorrow, you can have mommy's car."

She grins maniacally. Uh oh. I turn to the graphics desk: "I might need a ride to work on Monday."

Em and I are walking out of the schoolhouse door when a little boy in her class stops us.

"Emmie got a said face," he sneers.

Instantly, her face collpases.

"Em," I warn. She's already had one crying fit over the bad mark, and I'm not looking forward to another.

"I not get a sad face. I got a straight face," she whines.

"Nuh-uh!" the boy protests.

"Yuh-huh!" Em responds.

I can see that exchange repeating for hours, so I lead her away as a teacher lectures the boy with, "Is that your business?!"

"Emmie, the best response would be to trun that into a joke," I explain, as we head to the car. "He wasn't totally serious - I think he was trying to tease you - but it didn't come across well. So you should try to think of a way to make it a joke."

"Ohhhhhh," she says, thoughtfully. "I mate a joke on him..."

"Yes. Laughter diffuses almost any situation," I believe that to the fullest.

"But he mate me angry," she says.

"No, no, no," I say. "You can't let what he says make you feel bad. Then he has power over you."

I wonder if this is too much for her. I wonder if it's too paranoid of me.

"Yes!" She says, her eyes alight. "I gotta keep my own power ober myself! So I mate good choices!"

What the - ... That's exactly where I was going with that! Letting other people control your emotions clouds your decision-making! She got that, instinctively!

"I goeend put my power in a box where nobody can find it," she says, crossing her arms and arching her eyebrows. I am a diabolical genius, the expression says. "I got a lot of powers."

"Um..." I try not to laugh at her literal interpretation of the word 'power.' "Why don't you keep them in your heart and your brain?"

She thinks about it for a minute, and then nods.

"Okay. I keep dem in my heart an' my brain, and den nobody can tate them."

"Not if you don't let them," I agree.

"I won't," she declares.


Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Em catches me with her butterfly net.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Ah, the car line. My old frenemy...

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile