Sep. 23: Jen’s birthday came and went

My birthday was last weekend and my friends and family showered me with delightful gifts. It almost made it fun to turn 43 years old. OK, nothing’s fun about being 43. But as my friend Carla says, “Every birthday spent outside the urn or on top of the grass is a GOOD birthday.” She is a wise woman.

Still, the night before my birthday I pulled a muscle in my back while plucking grey hairs from my head. A reminder of my age could not have been better-timed, and I spent much of my birthday hobbling around like an 80-year-old. Pffft.

One of the most amusing things this year was that almost every card I received had some reference to drunkenness. Is that really what people think of when they think of me? Don’t answer that question. Here’s one of the hilarious cards—this one’s from the Jordans:

 

Funny, right? Sweet Emma, April’s 10-year-old, added this:

(Heh heh heh. Best they learn early, right?)

On the same card, April’s 8-year-old declared his very poor taste in Broadway musicals:

 

Here’s a sampling of the other fabulous things I received on Sunday…

 

Most oversized edible gift:

Yup, it’s a ginormous gummy bear.
Someone suggested I post pictures of the bear as I eat it—missing an ear, missing a leg, etc. 
Good idea, right? 
I think it’s super-funny that people think it will take me more than one day to eat it.

 

Most practical item to use when working

with all those kids at school:

Fancy Anthony™ said, “If you’re using it at school, you should just cross out the ‘maybe’.”

 

The gift I am totally taking to Jack’s

next early-morning football game:

 

 

Most semi-automatic gift my kids

have already stolen from me:

Sunday at 7pm: Manullang Family Nerf Gun Fight.
Be there.
SO I CAN KICK YOUR ASS.

 

Best excuse to get my frozen treats

and coffee on the outside:

Seriously, aren’t these the best gift cards a person could ever receive? 
In my world, they are.

 

Most inedible gift that I am totally gonna

try to eat anyway because

OMG it smells like deliciousness:

Seriously, these candles should be approved by the FDA.
Someone get me a spoon, stat.

 

 

The thing I’ve been asking for since I was 6

and still have not received, dammit:

All things considered, it was a good birthday. I felt loved and happy, and there’s not much better than that. Thank you for knowing me so well, and for your generosity, goodness, stolen music, floor deck food, friendship, and everything else that makes me smile on non-birthday days too.

Sep. 7: This ain’t cool

Today is my kids’ second day of school. They both left wearing shorts. It’s 90,000,000° outside (I *might* have some extra zeroes there). The A/C already came on, promising the indoors will be a cool respite from the outdoors, even though having the windows already closed means the air will be stale and icky within hours. The car’s interior is seventh-level-of-hell-hot, and second degree burns to any skin that comes in contact with said interior is a given. And yet… I see people posting on Facebook and in their blogs about the cool fall weather, even rain. WTF???

I’m not complaining—the warm weather here is lovely, even when it’s too hot to enjoy. Just knowing it’s out there makes me happy.

But it ain’t fall here, folks. It ain’t. You are wrong, people who live in other parts of the country. Wrong, I tells ya. The calendar says it’s still summer and so does the thermometer in my car.

Now, pass the iced tea before the heat exhaustion kills me dead.

Sep. 4: Yay! Grrrrrr! Yay! Grrrrrr!

Last week was completely, totally, 100 percent chaotic. I’m not even going to try to share all that’s been going on, but I will say that it pretty much begins and ends with PTO. You’re shocked, I know. This is a crazy time of year for PTO—school starts on Tuesday and there is SO much to get ready—and while I have the most amazing team to work with, my brain just won’t shut off. Argh.

I got the original Broadway cast soundtracks for Les Miz and and Mamma Mia yesterday. Having new music is such a lovely thing. I look forward to having time to sit down with the lyrics so the stories of both shows make more sense—though I suspect Mamma Mia is as stupid as it seems.

Jack got the teacher I was hoping he’d get, and one of his best buds is also in his class. BUT I’m actually kinda mad at Jack right now, so I don’t really care whether or not he’s happy. Seriously, you know how sometimes your kid can act like a complete fartknocker, like you even consider driving him out to the country and leaving him in a beet farm somewhere? That’s Jack the past few days. Vic and I are ready to kick him out of the house, which we didn’t expect to want to do for another six years or so.

I’ll be honest; I’m glad the kids are going back to school and won’t be around home, whining whining whining. Where are my clean clothes? I’m bored! When will you feed me? Geez. It’s EVERY DAY with that stuff. Good riddance, whiners! (Seriously, I’m tha-rilled that they’re growing up as quickly as they are—most the time, anyway.)

The pup will not stop barking at anyone who dares to walk past our house. He’s making me crazy. It’ll be all quiet in the house and suddenly he sees something outside and goes NUTS at the window. It makes me pee a little. OK, not really. But it’s scary.

The PTO has already received several donations in response to the solicitations we sent out last week. It always surprises me when people are so eager to sponsor our efforts!

I read a local headline the other day that said someone threw a bunch of kittens out of a minivan on a busy road. Can you believe that? It makes me want to throw that person out of a minivan on a busy road. People are jerks.

We went up to Mt. St. Helens today. The last thing I should be doing right now is taking off for a non-school thing, but really, it’s exactly what I needed. Tuesday morning, when I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I’ll be glad I had a little break. The weather was perfect today—clear and sunny, even hot at times—and the views were amazing. Want proof? Here’s a pic I took from Johnston Ridge Observatory:

The viewpoint is 5½ miles north of the crater. We never see the big hole from Portland—in fact, from Portland, St. Helens looks a bit flatter but otherwise the same as she did pre-1980. It’s really fascinating to be right there. We stopped at two other visitor centers on our way back to I-5. It was a perfect day to be up in the mountains. It was a perfect day to be with family. It was a perfect day.

Bring it on, Tuesday! I am soooo gonna kick your ass.

Aug. 28: Weekend wrap-up

The weekend is over. Vic goes back to work tomorrow, which bums me out almost as much as it does him—I do enjoy having him around during the day, and not just because he mopped in front of my friends last week. We’ve had a busy few days, but I shall try to catch up with the goings-on at the House of Manullang.

• PTO is going and going and going… it’s taking way too much of my time right now, and you’re lucky I don’t blather on and on about it like I want to. Sunshine and I are getting things ready for the new school year—which starts Sep. 6—and at least for now, have stayed as sane as we were going in. We shall see what this next week brings.
• Today we saw another one of our Broadway in Portland shows: Mamma Mia. I’ve gone back and forth on my opinion of it all afternoon, and I’ve finally decided that it’s mostly stupid, but there’s good music and generally it’s big, silly fun. Kinda like Grease. I was surprised at the acting, which I thought was quite bad—like, high school theater-caliber—and WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH KELLER AUDITORIUM’S TERRIBLE SOUND AT SOME SHOWS??? Sorry, I yelled a little there because OMG IT DRIVES ME CRAZY.
• P.S. I hated Mamma Mia, the movie. Hated it. I’m not sure why, since I liked most of the cast and there’s that ABBA music that’s fun, but I couldn’t even stand to watch it until the end. Ugh.
• P.S. part deux: I think my mom just disowned me for that last statement.
• P.S. numero three-o: On a related topic, I do not like Glee. I should like Glee. I should LOVE Glee. I’ve watched five episodes and think it’s one of the worst things on TV. What’s wrong with me? As much as I love musicals and all, shouldn’t Glee be one of my favorite shows? It is not.
• I read a book this weekend called The Penny Pinchers Club, and like the musical we saw today, it was all fluff and kind of a waste of time. Okay, it was mostly a clever little story, but when the main character was encouraged to Dumpster-dive to save money, I lost interest FAST. There were other tips on pinching pennies that made me laugh: using the empty bags from cereal boxes, because FREE WAX PAPER! (Who spends too much money on wax paper? I go through a roll of wax paper every few years, MAYBE. Is there something wrong with me? I don’t care; I’m not saving empty cereal bags.) 
• Tomorrow night a bunch of gals are coming over to make pencil cakes for the classrooms for the first day of school. What’s a pencil cake, you ask? You totally asked that. I know you did. Here’s the basic idea, which we have used as our starting point. Our finished cakes will be approximately one vajillion times better though.
• My mom didn’t have her surgery on Friday. It’s been postponed and the surgeon is all “meh” about it, which in a weird way makes us all feel good that they’re so NOT worried about doing the surgery immediately.
• Vic and I went to Cannon Beach on Thursday and we ran into the delightful Fukai family there. How lucky were we? We had dinner together and then went our merry ways, so our visit was short but fun and reminded us that we’ve hardly seen the Fukais all summer and that sucks. Catching up away from home was the best part of the day because the weather was rotten on the beach—I mean, it’s still the beach, and it’s still being away from home without kids, and it’s still beautiful scenery, and it’s still a day off work… we just really coulda done without the wind.
• I have a bunch of Pinterest finds to share but I’m too lazy to go get them. Maybe next time.

No more words.

Aug. 24: Beach pics

I promised a while back that I’d post pictures of our beach trip, and here, finally, they are:

We started our day at Cannon Beach. That there is Haystack Rock, obvy.

This is just the right level of crowded-ness for me. The other day, after the weekend’s beautiful beach weather was all over the news, I heard someone on their phone say, “We were in Seaside, and it took us and hour and a half to go one mile.” That is FAR from the right level of crowded-ness for me. Ugh.

All of these photos were taken with our iPhone cameras. It was the zoomed-in ones that turned out fuzzy and ugly.

‘Course, even blurry, Haystack Rock is pretty cool.

Starfeesh! Where you see the pack of people in some of our pics? They were lookin’ at that weird fish. It was shaped like a star!!

Goofy boy.

 

Weird kids.

 

I’m siiiiinkiiiiing!! Oh, the drama.

 

Love this girl. Love her.

This is the pic I took for Sherilee to prove to her the sun was shining. Ouch.

 

That, my friends, was a beautiful day on the Oregon Coast.