It’s Friday, and that means you get a post called I Don’t Care Enough About You to Write in Transitioning Paragraphs Friday.
- What are your plans for Father’s Day? We don’t have any. I should probably work on that.
- Here are 11 of the worst Father’s Day gifts you could give. I think the branding iron is kinda cool, but the rest are pretty bad. There are no nose hair trimmers on the list—does that mean those are a good gift? I sorta need to know ASAP.
- School’s out. I managed to keep Katie and Jack busy yesterday—they played with friends, watched a little TV, and we ran some errands—but this morning Katie said she missed school. I’ve got a big ol’ job chart all set up for them to earn extra allowance all summer, though, so if they tell me they’re bored I can point to that and maybe they’ll leave me the hell alone.
- (“Super Mom.” That’s the phrase you were looking for.)
- I got each of the kids a workbook for transitioning into their new grades in the fall. (As further proof of my complete nerdism, I loved that kind of thing when I was in grade school.) They’re actually pretty excited about them, but we’ll see how far they get before the workbooks mysteriously go missing. That always happens, doesn’t it?
- Last weekend I found some IKEA items that have changed life at The House of Manullang. I usually keep a grocery bag under my desk for paper recycling, and it looks messy and ugly; I replaced it with one of these nylon recycling bags:
They’re a little taller than a paper grocery bag, but as you can see, not as ugly and a lot more durable. They were $6.99 for the set of three. Don’t tell Mr. IKEA, but I would’ve paid that for just one.
I also found these cute metal plant support sticks that look way nicer than wooden dowels or big stakes in the yard. They were $1.99 for a set of two, and come in either black or silver:
One of the other fun and inexpensive things we got were these small blown glass lamps ($6.99), which we put on either end of our mantle. They make for nice mood lighting and now I want them everywhere in the house:
OK, so maybe these things haven’t changed our lives, but you gotta admit, they are neat-o. It’s IKEA LOVE. So much IKEA love. - On Wednesday, the last day of school, I met up with Cassie, Fancy Lori™, and Sunshine for a leisurely lunch at Stanford’s. We hung out with even more lovely ladies at Dina’s a few hours later during another celebration of the end of our freedom, where we drank heavily to numb the pain. Well, *I* drank heavily. I think everyone else just sat and watched me. That’s how it felt, anyway. I haven’t had that much to drink in 20-some years. It was quite lovely, the freedom of not caring if I spit water across the counter onto my friends. I will miss those friends.
- I won’t be drinking that much again any time soon, I can assure you. Besides the fact that being out of control is my least favorite way to be, I don’t think I can spare the brain cells. The good news is that I never threw up, and I wasn’t hungover yesterday. Both of those things are firsts for how the few drinking binges I’ve had in my life have ended.
- Ran across this today:
Oh yeah, it’s a nice thought. Whoever wrote it has obviously never met my son.Your child is having a problem, not being a problem.
- We’ve mostly stuck to perennials for our front yard, but this year we planted a handful of pansies and dahlias. The dahlias have taken their time blooming, so I was excited to see that this one finally popped all the way open yesterday:
I love it, except for all the holes. Slugs are devouring the plants in our front yard. Last night Victor scattered slug poison (or bait or tranquilizer or whatever you call it—that’s the powdery stuff you can see in the pic). This morning Katie came running in and said, “Mom, this is sooo gross! You gotta see all the slime and dead slugs in our yard!” She wasn’t kidding—it IS gross. However, she was sad for all the slugs and I thought it was hilarious. So hilarious, in fact, that I took pictures. Katie thinks there’s something seriously disturbed about Mommy now.
Notice the slug trails coming away from the plant… they end in dead slugs! Yay! (Oh, P.S. That’s one of the IKEA plant sticks in the delphinium that you can barely see but it’s totally cute, right?)
More slug trails, more dead slugs. I laugh all sinister-like at this.
See, this guy was totally going for another dahlia when fate jumped in the way. Don’t mess with my flowers, jackhole! Now you’re dead on the sidewalk and my kid’s gonna ride over you with his bike until you’re flat. Ha.
This all kinda makes our yard a big ol’ slug graveyard right now, which isn’t so cool. But maybe now our plants will live to adulthood.
- Exciting news! Katie and Jack got their own library cards yesterday. This is their first official-ness, except for their social security cards and passports, which I won’t let them carry in the wallets they always lose. They were pretty “meh” about it until the librarian told them the library cards were a little like credit cards. That’s when Jack’s eyes got huge. I don’t think he heard anything else she said.
- So, what would you do if you came out of sedation and found out your family had chosen to pull the plug on you? My grandma is doing lots better now, but I’m afraid for my mom if Grandma ever finds out they yanked her. I talked to Grandma this morning and she sounded almost normal. It’s very strange, this whole thing, but I’m glad for Kathy’s sake that Grandma didn’t die on her watch. Although that would’ve given me lots to tease her about for years to come… Heh heh heh…
Smell ya later, folks—
Ugh, enough with the exclamation points. I have no exciting stories from my own life, so instead I’ll share a cautionary tale that Sherilee posted on Facebook this morning. Actually, it’s not so much cautionary as it is a New York Magazine author’s experience with the swine flu. Which she lived through! Because it really isn’t that bad! And it also sounds exactly like what I had last winter! But no matter! Because we’re all bound to get it and most of us aren’t going to die from it so stop freaking out about it already! 
