Quick Takes

I'm keeping M. company while he watches the Packers, sipping a (second) gin and tonic, and trolling the internet to no avail. I WANT to post here - I have the time and the inclination, I just don't have that spark of an idea. My mind is racing through topics and rejecting them - too boring, too short, too introspective, needs photos. What to write? I'll settle for some random quick takes, I suppose.

1. M.'s mom's maiden name is Triplett. I'm pretty sure it means that he was destined to marry a triplet. Just glad I'm that girl. Not the least of which because he just brought me my second G&T with a fresh lime - not everyone would be that considerate ;-).

2. I used to vacation every summer at Cape Cod, and now all of those memories seem to be permanently Instagram'd. Every picture that comes to my mind has the same filters I see popping up in everyone's photos online. Maybe because Instagram was created to make our photos look old, or maybe because I have Instragram envy, not sure which. Because I do not own a smart phone, I cannot use Instragram. But I see it all there in my head, with the same soft faded look. Sparkly diamonds of sunlight dancing on the water. Salty seaweed drying on the sand (I HATED the seaweed!). Sandy paths lined with thorny beach plum bushes. Creaky wooden floors in cottages with greying shingle siding. Outdoor showers, ice cream sundaes, dining al fresco at Thompson's Clam Bar surrounded by squawking seagulls. It's all Instagram'd, baby. And I love it. I wonder which memories of my kids will be the cherished ones they hold forever, that make them smile when they are 30 years older and hundreds of miles away.

3. Not all the memories are super fabulous, of course. I do remember I had a teeny tiny shoplifting incident there once, where my grandmother (I THINK it was my grandmother) caught me after a shopping trip with some purloined candy and made me go back in and return it (Oh! That makes me think of the penny candy shops in Chatham! It was a treat we looked forward to all year! I didn't steal from one of THOSE shops, just a regular old drug store. As if that makes it any better). And also there was the traumatizing trip to see ET on the big screen. An even that will forever live in infamy in my family. Picture three little girls in a movie theatre, screaming their heads off out of terror. That movie was NOT touching, it was awful, and I am so permanently scarred from the experience that nothing will ever convince me otherwise.

Those memories aren't so Instagrammy.

4. I just mistakenly thought that Pitbull's name was Bulldog. Ha? Eh.

5. I think the cat and I are finally starting to get along, nearly 13 years after I adopted her. M. and I picked her out together two months in to our relationship, and she has shown a clear M. preference since then. She sleeps on him, yowls if he's outside, and frequently takes joy in tripping me or attacking me as I try to climb into bed at night. But lately she has taken to settling down between us in the bed (versus curling up next to M. on the outside of the bed), and she has abated in her attacks on me. I hope this doesn't mean she's going to die soon.

I should do seven of these. That's the deal, usually, "Seven Quick Takes." But I need to shower, and take advantage of a free Showtime preview weekend on TV, and maybe have a third G&T. So 5 is all you get, for whatever they were worth. Here's hoping I have some better bloggy inspiration soon!

Decisions Are the Worst*

Hi all. I seek your advice.

This morning, driving in my car on my way to work, I lamented the stupid humid weather that has been messing with my hair and sweat glands and wardrobe choices to my sister on the phone (hands-free bluetooth, por supuesto). I mentioned that I was trying to encourage crisp fall weather by wearing a sweater/skirt/boots combo for the first time this season. I thought it was a harmless comment.

My sister paused, and squeezed out the response, "Well, I kind of think 34 is to old to be pulling off the skirt/boots look."

Gasp!

Am I too old to wear high-ish boots with skirts to work?

For reference, I work in an office on an Army post in a rural-ish area, where many people wear Army uniforms (as befitting their status as Army personnel), and the rest of us are instructed to wear "business casual" dress. And our handbook (yes, we have one) has lots of helpful hints on what defines business casual, such as "does not include blue jeans, but colored rinse jeans such as black jeans, or denim skirts, are allowed." That's not a verbatim quote, but it's very, very close. I have seen much in the way of "business casual" in my office that indicates to me that our definition of "business casual" likely differs from the definition other organizations might use. With our group falling on the more "casual" end of the "business casual" spectrum, clearly.

But the setting doesn't really matter, does it? It doesn't get at the heart of my question, which is "Am I too old to wear boots and a skirt to work?" Should a 34-year-old professional (can I call myself a professional?) with two children retire this look? My sister seems to think so.

For reference, this is the outfit I wore today:


I'm too lazy to figure out how to create some sort of poll, so please, answer me in the comments section. My fall/winter wardrobe is depending on it.

I am not too lazy to post a bonus video for you, where M. and I try to get our cat to take a little jog on our treadmill. Enjoy. Spoiler: It didn't work.



*Can my sisters and childhood friends name the movie referenced in this blog title? You'd better be able to...

Put Your Own Title Here, I'm Going to Bed

So sorry to leave you all hanging there on poor Winnie's demise and how we broke it to the kids. We ended up telling them right after finishing dinner last Monday - we told them that Winnie got sick and died, and that we were very sad about it (to put "death" in a bit of context for them). Finn insisted on seeing Winnie - and we obliged, as we hadn't disposed of the body yet. He was curious and sad and seemed to think that Winnie died because he/she ate the blue gravel at the bottom of the tank. We tried explaining that it was just bad germs, but... who knows, kids get strange ideas in their heads. I think he still believes it was the blue stuff.

I opted against holding a "funeral" in the bathroom - I thought having the kids watch us flush the body might be too macabre or traumatizing or just destined to be the topic of many, many future conversations. But we did go around the table and each say something nice about Winnie. Things like "I really liked how we could see through Winnie." Scintillating stuff, as I'm sure you can imagine.

By the next morning, Winnie was mostly a distant memory. I caught Finn trying to reach the tank a couple of days later, when he noticed it sitting in its usual spot. Which, ahem, we still had not actually cleaned out yet. Including the body. Gross, I know. I cleaned it out that night.

This past weekend we were at the pet store to buy cat-related items, and the kids were (per usual) absolutely fascinated with all the fish. I think they could have watched them for hours. I sense there is a fish or two in our future, once we feel ready to risk a wet pet once again.

I'd blog more, but I'm exhausted. Lucy has been waking up at night recently, and only MOMMY will do to settle her down. About 20% of me really enjoys that, and the other 80% just wants to sleep 7 hours without interruption. So rather than scouring my brain for more a) entertaining stories, or b) complaints about my children, I shall pour myself into bed and get ready for wake up call #1. Should be coming in about 3 hours.

Yet Somehow We've Been Trusted With The Care and Survival of Two Humans

Bit of a Situation here at the M. household. I think I neglected to mention this on the blog earlier, but we gained a new family pet about a month and a half ago. It's a frog - well, a tadpole, really. One of those "Grow-a-Frog" kits that lets you watch a tadpole transform into an adult frog. It was a gift from my mom to Finn for Christmas (the kit - we had to send away for the tadpole), and was given in the spirit of reminiscing about my childhood in a sense, because when I was a girl I had a Grow-a-Frog. It lived in my bedroom until it metamorphosed into a frog and began singing it's little froggy heart out every night, keeping me awake. It's tank (it? I can't remember if it was a girl or a boy, but I think I called it Freddie) was moved to an upstairs hallway, and there it lived far longer than probably anyone ever wanted it to. My mom claimed that one day it hopped out of its tank and, since she was too grossed out to pick it up, it hopped away and was living out its remaining (likely short, since it was amphibious) time on this earth somewhere in the cracks and crevices of our house. Though now that I think back on it, this seems like a suspect story, like one of those "we brought the dog to a farm where he has more space to run" white lies. May have to pursue that further with my mother.

Anyway, my point is, the frog was easy to care for and it lived a decently long time. We decided that even we would have trouble messing this up, so we sent away for the tadpole and promptly forgot about it. The company understandably does not ship these creatures out willy-nilly in the winter - they carefully check weather reports and wait for a long stretch of above-freezing weather before each shipment goes out. Thus it wasn't until early February or so that M. got a knock on the door from the mail carrier (in a happy coincidence, he was working from home that day) with a surprise tadpole package for us.

The tadpole was installed in the tank and named Winnie (because he/she is see-through, like a window). Caring for it is simple - feed it once a day with the food it came with, and every week or so, remove about a quarter of the tank water and replace it with fresh bottled water. We keep the tank up on a high shelf in the living room built-ins, to keep it out of reach of our destructive cat. This makes it a little more difficult to remember to feed it, but we've been pretty good about bringing it down to the dinner table most nights so that Winnie could entertain us during our dinner conversation. Finn is the one in charge of feeding it for the most part, and he is very proud of "doing his chores."

Very quickly, the tadpole sprouted teeny-tiny back legs, so everything seemed to be going well. However, development seemed to go verrrrrrrrry slooooooooooooowly after that, to the point where we were seeing zero progress. The back legs remained tiny, and there were no front legs to speak of. According to our instructions, the optimal conditions in the tank included slightly cloudy water, but things soon became VERY cloudy. It almost seemed as though Winnie wasn't really eating his/her food. Admittedly, there were a couple of lengthy-ish stretches (3 or 4 days) where we completely dropped the ball on feeding him/her, but really, it seemed like less of a priority since Winnie wasn't eating what we gave her/him in the first place.

I'm sure, by now, you can see where this is going. Last night, I noticed Winnie was slow to respond to my shakes and jiggles of the tank while I put in some fresh water and food. She/he was still swimming around a bit, but was also spending a fair amount of time drifting listlessly on a half-cocked angle. I'm no expert, but I could tell that this was not looking good. Tonight, M. went to grab Winnie to bring him/her to the dinner table, and discovered the poor thing belly up on the bottom of the tank. There is no mistaking it. Winnie is quite dead.

We quickly covered with the kids by pretending that M. had been up from the table for other reasons, and when they asked about Winnie, we told them that Winnie had already been fed. Lies, lies!

Now we are torn. The kids have not really dealt with death yet, and Lucy is of course still far too young to understand it anyway. But at four and a half, Finn is probably not going to just forget to ask about Winnie if we quietly clean out the tank and put it away. He's also not likely to believe that Winnie somehow escaped and went for a swim down the bathtub drain (right? or maybe...?). I think we're going to have to fess up that Winnie died. The plan is to bring out the tank tomorrow night, gently break it to the table that Winnie got sick and died, and then hold a little "funeral" in the bathroom where we say a few kind words and flush the corpse down the toilet.

Is this a bad idea? Is Finn too young for this? Will seeing the body travel down the toilet traumatize him? Also, I'm not too sure what to do with Lucy while all this is going on. I definitely don't want her to see the flushing, because she will lose her shit. If I give her water in the "wrong" cup, she loses her shit, so I'm pretty sure that seeing her beloved Winnie get flushed is going to create a tantrum the likes of which we haven't yet seen.

Please, share with me your advice! Also, we are considering getting a replacement froglet (they will apparently send us one for free) or perhaps another pet, like a goldfish. Is this pure folly?

RIP Winnie. We loved you, though we hardly knew you...


(Photo from amcgltd.com. Because ours is bloated and belly up, and not exactly picture-worthy. Note the clean tank, a likely clue that this one is healthy.)