May 21: IDCEAYWTPFriday

It’s Friday, and that means you get a post called I Don’t Care Enough About You to Write in Transitioning Paragraphs Friday.

• I started my chemo follow-up regimen this week, which, it turns out, is not all that different from my regular chemo regimen. Same side effects (except for hair loss), same length of time in the chair every three weeks. Bleah. I am not a fan.
• I was bizzy bizzy bizzy at the school this week with volunteer orientations and paperwork processing, all to keep our students safe. Next year my PTO doodies are going to change. I’ll be taking over the things Fancy Lori™ has been doing—treasurer, webmaster, yearbook editor, and maybe a few other titles. These things will all make me more awesome, right? Here’s the important question: will they make me FANCY???
• For the last two days I haven’t taken any pain pills. No Vicodin, no Oxycontin, not even Advil. Yay me! It’s not that I’m pain-free, I’m just trying to tolerate the everyday stuff better. Please let me know if I’m being extry-grouchy and I’ll start poppin’ pills again.
• I want, nay, MUST HAVE something with this printed on it:
  
• Yahoo! Travel published America’s Top 10 Underrated Cities, and Portland’s on it. So are Providence, Baltimore, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Kansas City, Louisville, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and Sacramento. I’ve only been to Minneapolis in the dead of winter, so I’m not a good judge of that city. But Sacramento? Really? It’s just really quite “meh” to me.
• It is shocking to me to see how horrible Sharon Stone is on Law & Order: SVU. Seriously, is she the worst actress on the planet? During the hostage situation on this week’s season finale I was really, really hoping she’d die—that’s how bad she is on that show. I hope the fall season brings us a new ADA.
• Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
• I had an echocardiogram on Wednesday. I don’t know when they’ll compare it to the one I had in December and let me know if there have been any changes. Dr. O says it’s unlikely that my heart is damaged because of the amount of adriamycin I had, and the echo tech said at my age, the heart heals itself surprisingly well. These things are both comforting, but I’m still eager to hear the results.
• I know, this is really pun-ny, but I love it anyway:
  
• You’ve been asking yourself, and asking others, and dying to find out: if someone were to put together a list of the most awesome mustaches, who would be on it? Now you know. I would have totally called shenanigans on this if #1 wasn’t #1.
• I’m going to a party at Sunshine’s house this evening! There will be food there! On Tuesday I’m meeting up with Loveliest Lori, Kim F’n, and Sunshine for lunch! And Deanna and Debi are visiting from Boise next weekend! I’m super-dee-duper excited to see them! As Jason Mraz sings, “la-la-la-la-la-la-la-life is wonderful.”

Have a great weekend!

May 11: L&O thoughts

There’s a Law & Order: SVU marathon on today, so it must be Tuesday.

• Victor’s home today. When the kids left for school at 8 and I asked him to turn the TV to channel 58, he rolled his eyes. I said, “Hey! It’s Tuesday at the Manullangs. This is what we do.” He thinks it’s funny—not haha-funny, but my-wife-is-a-nutjob-funny. It’s not like I watch Days of Our Lives all day. Sheesh. I must also add that Victor’s been watching TV with me since he first turned it on. Oh, sure. He makes fun, but he knows good TV when he sees it out of the corner of his eye.
• Law & Order: SVU has been on since 1999, but I started watching it just a couple years ago. With all these marathons on cable, now it’s getting to where I’ve seen almost every episode. Almost. Some days SVU is just noise in the background of an otherwise normal day. Still, I keep an eye on the marathon line-ups because OMG, what if there’s one I haven’t seen?
• Is this the coolest thing EVER? It’s a Law & Order coloring book! There’s even a dot-to-dot Lennie Briscoe. The artist has made L&O valentines too. Nothin’ says “I love you” like a drawing of Fin Tutuola collaring a perp.
• Every once in a while—not always on Tuesdays, and not always during SVU—one of my printers starts making noise even when it hasn’t been used in weeks. I think it’s possessed by demons. After watching a day’s worth of SVU, when everything seems creepier than normal, I’m positive.
• I recently found out my friend Cassie is also a L&O addict. So… guess what we’re going to be doing all summer? The shows are already great; just think how good they’ll be accompanied by many margaritas! If any more cable channels start running marathons, the summer’s going to be a blur. (That’d be awesome.)
• I saw the Law & Order: UK DVDs at Target recently. I don’t have any interest in owning them—who wants to watch the same L&O over and over?—but I hope to find the episodes online because OMG, the funny clothes they wear in those British courtrooms!

New episode just started and I haven’t seen it. Must watch.

Apr. 9: My new Friday plan

Usually when I write random lists of nothingness, I apologize because I’m unable or unwilling to form my thoughts into a cohesive blog post and you just have to deal with it. And it makes me feel bad, and I so desperately want to make everyone happy <cough cough> that it makes me die a little inside. But this morning I have no intention of apologizing. In fact, I think I might just have to make Friday my Random List of Nothingness day because it seems like a good day of the week to do that.

Sherilee has her Friday Night Grateful Moment; I have my I Don’t Care Enough About You to Write in Transitioning Paragraphs Friday. Seems about right.

• Victor’s home today, at least for now. Technically, he’s on call, so we can’t go on any adventures far from home. It’s nice spending a relaxed morning together now that the kids have gone off to school. Of course, we’re both on our laptops barely speaking to each other, but it’s lovely just to be together with some uninterrupted time. We’re planning a trip to IKEA in a little bit and that’ll be our romantic excursion for the day.
• Next week we’re going to Dreamgirls for our Broadway in Portland series. I still haven’t seen the Dreamgirls movie, but I plan to watch it this weekend so I have some idea of what the show is about. I know the music will be amazing. It’s the last show of our season if you don’t count Cirque Dreams Illumination, and I don’t because I hate all that creepy Cirque stuff. We’ll be selling those tickets at face value so let me know if you’re interested and I’ll try not to think you’re creepy too.
• My newest favorite iPhone game is Moxie. It’s a word game and totally addictive. You must have it. They’re working on Moxie 2, which is going to have the following changes: 6-letter words (instead of just 5), games will optionally start with “seed words,” landscape screen orientation, quick access to Moxie words screen, new screen to keep track of what letters have been used, much requested UNDO feature, and more moxie words. Should be out this month. Woo-hoo!
• As evidenced by my blog design, I love gerbera daisies. Imagine my surprise when I got home from our girls’ weekend in Salem and there was a vase full of them on the kitchen table. My friend Stephanie had dropped them by the day before, just because she’s wonderful, and I think the actual sound that came from my mouth was “Squeee!”  They were beautiful and made me feel special. Stephanie’s awesome. Do you know her? You should. We’re practically related. Not really. Anyway, almost two weeks later, these blooms are still looking fresh and cheery.

• The other day my mother-in-law brought about three meals’ worth of food for us, all homemade, and all delicious. We’re still eating some of it, in fact, because we managed to stretch out the enjoyment. When Sherilee came down on Tuesday, she sent us home with two huge pans of tasty treats as well—not to mention those rainbow cupcakes! We decided to freeze Sherilee’s dishes, and we plan to dive into them this weekend. One is a pesto something and the other is a green chile something. I can’t remember anything else she told us, but both of those things are good so I’m sure whatever else she put in them is good too. I tell ya, not having to think up meals is sooo nice right now.
• The battery on my laptop is dead. I mean that it’s totally, completely dead, and acts as though it’s not even there. I suppose I could just pick it up and look underneath to see if it’s pushed in all the way, but that seems like an awful lot of effort. I just keep it plugged in to the wall. Meh.
• My friends Kim F’n and Sherilee are now Facebook friends. Even though they went to school together for two years, they didn’t really know each other but now they’re, like, BFFs and are accusing me of keeping them apart. Whatev. And Sherilee and Sunshine are FB friends now too! Worlds are colliding! I think Jim Gaffigan explains the weirdness of this situation well:
  
  
  Download this MP3 - (Right Click)
  I’m totally OK with this, though. In fact, I love it. The four of us had some super-silly conversations on Facebook this week that made me LOL. Sometimes I even LMAO. Hooray!
• Yesterday I did about a gajillion loads of laundry. This is actually a pretty big feat for me, because I don’t do much laundry at our house, especially these days when I have zero energy. If you’re thinking, “Let’s see, she doesn’t clean up the kitchen, she doesn’t do the grocery shopping, she doesn’t make the bed, she doesn’t feed her children, AND she doesn’t do the laundry? What does she do???” then I just have one response: do you KNOW how many Law & Order marathons there are on cable? I don’t have time to do everything.
  
  Anyhoodle, here’s why I did all the laundry: because my moisture-wicking clothes failed at wicking moisture the night before, damn them all to hell. I woke up around 3 a.m., drenched in sweat. Completely, totally, dripping wet. Kinda. Long story short, I decided to wash all the bedding, including the pillow shams, duvet cover, and the blanket the dogs are supposed to sleep on when they’re on our bed but rarely do, as well as my jammies, ineffective moisture-wicking clothes, and bathrobe. That’s four loads right there. Then I kept on keepin’ on… I emptied hampers from the bedrooms, picked up eleventy billion towels off the kids’ bathroom flo0r, etc. Best of all, I folded everything as it came out of the dryer and put it away, and I completely cleared off the table in the laundry room! That thing is never clear! Am I awesome? I totally am. I think my busy bee-ness scared Vic a little. The prednisone makes me do busy bee kinds o’ things.
  
  Don’t tell him this, but I kinda like doing laundry. There’s a huge sense of satisfaction putting away empty hampers and filling up closets and drawers with fresh, clean clothes. Also, I think I’m the only one in the house who throws away socks with holes in them, and this gives me the best opportunity to do that. Now, ironing… that’s a different story.

And that is all I have to say about that.

Aug. 19: We’re a bad Nielsen Family

Homer Simpson’s TV wisdom

“When will I learn? The answers to life’s problems aren’t at the bottom of a bottle. They’re on TV!”

“It’s not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but somehow I managed to squeeze in 8 hours of TV a day.”

“Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover.”

“Let’s just plop them in front of the TV. I was raised in front of the TV and I turned out TV.”

I rarely watch TV when I’m home during the day. Every once in a while I’ll see a movie I enjoy is airing on one of the Encore channels, or there’s a marathon of a show I like running for an entire day. Those are the exceptions. For the most part, though, when the TV is on it’s turned to Disney or Nickelodeon, or the kids aren’t around and I’m watching TiVo.

Most of the shows I save on TiVo aren’t the most appropriate for kids; they’re either dramas or naughty-humor sit-coms. When Katie or Jack walk in while I’m watching, I pause the show. If they start making themselves comfortable, I remind them that “this show’s not for kids,” and they grumble and stomp out because I am totally the meanest mom ever. I like quiet while I’m watching TV, and it’s very, very rare that I’m watching anything that would interest them anyway.

Until last week. Last week Jack came in and caught me watching the first Batman movie, which I found while flipping channels. It’s a fun movie; Jack Nicholson is at his best as The Joker, he plays it mostly campy, and the plot is much simpler than the later Batman movies. Jack has taken a sudden interest in Batman since he got the Lego Batman video game, and asked if he could watch it. I looked at Victor, and both of us did a quick inventory of the violence we could remember in the movie. We told him it was alright to watch, and he saw about half an hour of it before it was time for bed.

Since then, every time he’s come into a room I’m in and the TV’s on, he asks if it’s Batman.

No.

No, it’s not.

No, not this time either.

It was Batman once, honey, and it probably won’t ever be again.

Because here’s one thing you can be sure of: if Mommy’s watching TV, there’s a 75 percent chance it’s some variation of Law & Order or CSI.

It’s kind of Mommy’s thing.