Aimless Thoughts.

I have a zillion things rolling around in my head today… none of which are enough to write an actual post about, but perhaps the sum of all the parts will equal… something. See? I can’t even finish a thought.

In no particular order…

I was going to title this post “random” something or other but since I tend to massively overuse that word, I clicked over to thesaurus.com to find something else. One synonym was “aimless,” so I went with that, not because it necessarily represented what I was trying to communicate but because it made me think of the song “Aimless Love” by my very favorite singer/songwriter, John Prine. And thinking of him reminded me that we are going to see him in DAYTON, OHIO in just a couple weeks, and I am extremely excited about it. I bought tickets months ago as an early birthday present to myself. Other birthday presents to myself will include fresh highlights and maybe a pedicure.

Speaking of birthdays, our crazy insane birthMONTH concludes on Saturday with Kate’s party at the skating rink. I finally got around to scheduling it, but I’ve yet to actually invite anyone. This morning, I tried to find the invitations I bought but I think I must have thrown them away with the Easter candy wrappers when I put together the kids’ baskets. So yeah, this could be a problem. #momfail

In other random news, I’m trying to plan our summer vacation but I can’t make any decisions, mostly because I can’t find the time to research anything thoroughly and omg it’s almost MAY and I don’t know where we are going.

Ugh my anxiety levels are skyrocketing just talking about it.

We had such a great time in Michigan last year that we want to go back there, but we’re not sure if we should go to the exact same place, or try something new. Really, the Tamarack Lodge would be hard to beat. But I think the Inn at Bay Harbor looks pretty amazing, although I haven’t actually looked into availability or pricing. Any suggestions?

Right now I just want to be anywhere that it’s warm and not raining. This rain sucks. It’s supposed to rain/thunderstorm again this afternoon. Oh so here’s a good example of how crazy neurotic I am. Last night I thought to myself that I hoped it did thunderstorm this evening because Kate’s supposed to have softball practice and I wanted it to be cancelled because I really want to have time to make carne asada for dinner tonight. But then I thought that I shouldn’t hope that practice is cancelled, because her team has only practiced twice and games will be starting soon and she’s in a coach pitch league this year and she really needs to learn how to, you know, hit and field the ball before an actual game. So then I thought that I really didn’t know which option I should hope for, when it hit me – it’s going to thunderstorm or not thunderstorm regardless of what I’m rooting for in my head. Practice is going to be cancelled or it’s not. That is something I can mark off my list of things to worry about because believe it or not I have no control over the weather.

Ugh.

All this crazy talk is reminding me of when I was at the drug store waiting on prescription last week and overheard someone trying to pin down the pharmacist on which diet pill worked best. He was trying to convey to her in a tactful manner that a) they are all the same and b) unfortunately for all of us none of them work. She wasn’t picking up what he was laying down, however, and proceeded with her line of questioning.

“What if I want to drink some alcohol while I’m taking these. Is that ok?”

It was at this point that I picked up my phone to start tweeting what I was witnessing.

“I have anxiety,” she said. “What if I take these and then I need to take some Xanax, will that mess me up?”

I was cracking up.

But really, people who live in crazy houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Because today? Please pass the alcohol AND the Xanax.

And also the diet pills.

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Commenting on Comments

This is a very random (and not very substantial) post, but I am perplexed by something today.

Jenny and I love, love, love it when people comment on our posts. I have heard Jenny say more than once, “No one has commented on my post today and it makes me want to kill myself.”

Not to put pressure on you or anything!

But yeah, when you comment and give us advice or tell a story or just say “hellz yeah,” it makes our day. Really, it does.

And, a lot of times the comments you leave are way smarter and more insightful than whatever we’ve been able to unintelligibly barely articulate in the actual post.

A few months ago we installed a WordPress plug-in (are we techy or what?) that allows us (or you) to reply directly to a comment that has been made, and if someone comments on your comment, you get an email notification. Did you follow that?

But it occurred to me today that we don’t take advantage of that feature as often as we could or should, and it’s not because we don’t value your comments, it’s just because… well, I guess because we haven’t gotten in the habit of it.

OMG could I possibly belabor this point any more??

My question is this – when you leave a comment, do you hope someone will respond? To make this lame post more exciting (to me, anyway) let’s take a vote.


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Pre-birthday stream of consciousness

Remember all those times I made fun of Jenny for the trauma she put herself (and her friends and family) through while making birthday cakes for her kids?

Yeah, I may live to regret that.

Sam’s birthday is Saturday and while I have commissioned his cake (and accessories) to hands much more capable than my own, I am going to attempt to make something for his preschool celebration on Friday.

After I spent tons of time googling “preschool birthday party snacks” obsessively over the weekend, my sister came up with a brilliant idea – chocolate covered pretzels made to look like lightsabers (because he is Star Wars crazy!).

So now I’m trying to figure out exactly how to make them REALLY look like lightsabers. Because the two- and three-year-olds in his class are really going to a) know what a lightsaber is and b) be concerned about the authenticity of their snacks.

But you know me – I always need something to make my life more difficult!

I’ve been doing some research and I have a couple different ideas, but I have no idea if any of them will work out. I’ve never used any of the products/methods I’m considering, but hey there’s no time like the present to learn, right?

Here are a couple of my ideas – let me know what you think will work best!

For the “light-up” part of the lightsaber, should I…

Use colored candy melts?

Dip in white chocolate and cover with sanding sugar?

Tint white chocolate with gel dye?

Spray white chocolate with color mist?

I don’t know!!!

And then there’s the issue of the handle part.

My original thought was to color the white chocolate black (or just use dark chocolate) and stick these on with icing:

Or, I could use silver color mist. But if I do that, how do I keep the colors from blending together? I don’t know how exact I can be with the spray.

Help!!!! How should I do this??

Yes, this is definitely going to end up like one of Jenny’s cake freak-outs, no doubt about it.

Stay tuned for frenzied middle-of-the-night tweets from yours truly!

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