_{The Pterodactyl will be five in a couple of weeks, but he’s having trouble outgrowing the terrible twos.}

_{His tantrums have become legendary, although his teachers claim he’s the sweetest, most disciplined child to ever walk the earth.}

_{He can be. And then he can beat the shit}… Read full post »

The Pterodactyl wanted his little sister’s purse this morning, her pink shiny purse with the enormous heart-shaped rhinestone buckle. She carries it everywhere. It usually contains her Teddy, an old remote control she uses as a cell phone, and something ridiculously inappropriate like a screwdr… Read full post »

Cat crap must be salty. My dog, Damn Gem, loves cat crap. The vet says it’s sort of like an hors d’oeuvre for her, which of course makes me think she should be put down. But we love her, and she’s doesn’t mind at all when the Tyrant tries to/… Read full post »

The Tyrant has piled 14 cans of food, three plastic cups and two nail files atop a plastic cutting board. She says it’s a cupcake store. But it’s keeping her from shredding up the packing tape with kitchen shears, which frankly seemed a little dangerous. 

The Pterodactyl is eating/… Read full post »

One of the nice aspects of being in shape is that when you feel like killing somebody (stay out of my way, suburban cougar lady driving a Cadillac Escalade at the speed of light through the preschool parking lot), instead you can go to the gym and work out/… Read full post »

The other day Hot Firefighter Husband walked into the kitchen with a sticky children’s medicine dispenser that he picked up from the Tyrant’s bedroom and said, “Sometimes I come home and I walk around the house and wonder what goes on around here while I’m gone.” … Read full post »

The Pterodactyl wants me to buy him a purse. Obviously he’s gay. Which would explain his fascination with the hair dryer, his weird attachment to anything fuzzy, and his tendency to sing along to Taylor Swift songs. He’s almost five years old and he loves rainbows. Can there possibly be/… Read full post »

It started with a few aches and pains. I thought I was feeling sore from carrying two children a half-mile back from the beach the previous day. (Impressive, yes?)

Day two, I felt a little lethargic. So I gave myself a blast of energy with a high-powered weightlifting session. … Read full post »

On a recent rainy Sunday, Husband was working and the rest of us decided to have a Movie Morning. A Movie Morning is when Mommy can’t think of anything Mother-of-the-Yearish to do, so she decides to bond with the children via the Disney Channel, which requires more effort than you/… Read full post »

Well, I managed to get the kids back to school. Even the Tyrant is enrolled this year, although it’s only three days a week. Still, for 12 hours each week, I am kid-free, at least until I begin to use the extended day program at the pre-school, which could be/… Read full post »

Husband and I don’t argue much in front of the kids, mainly because it seems silly to add to whatever neurotic tendencies they’ll develop simply by living with me, but also because I’m nearly always right and I don’t want to constantly correct him in front of  his childr/… Read full post »

It’s the final day of travel to Cape Cod, and we are finally heading in that direction now at 10:29 a.m. We’ve been in the van for 21 minutes, and I’ve already taken the Tyrant to the bathroom at Stop & Shop, threatened to cut off the Pterodactyl’s hand and/… Read full post »

Day 2. 

We all slept well. That’s the good news. And we’re on the road by 7:30 a.m. after a raucous breakfast that ended with my hooligans stealing approximately 400 tourist brochures for places we will never visit. 

For the moment we’re quietly chugging along in our lan/… Read full post »

Well, we’re five hours into our Vacation Odyssey Driving Trip to Cape Cod and Husband is already in the doghouse.

We are in Bumfuck, Alabama. Today’s headline in the Bumfuck Times is: Feeling Love -- More than 40 students dedicate life to Jesus Christ. On the plus side, Hank/… Read full post »

I have great news. Today is the start of our two-week cross-country odyssey, which includes back-to-back extended family vacations and driving to Cape Cod in our motorized landfill which has 94,000 miles on it. 

It is possibly the most fun you can have in a minivan with one overly-optimistic/… Read full post »

I’ve always thought that I was one bout of botulism away from my ideal weight. I now know that I’m one-half of a bout of botulism away.

I feel certain my recent stomach woes came from a can of tuna salad. You know - the kind that’s already mixed/… Read full post »