Finally! Tomorrow we put the homestead up for sale. Am I happy? Weeeeellllll. I’ll be happy to be done with it. After months of fixing, painting, primping, and packing most of our stuff to stage the place, this isn’t my house anymore. (Ha! It’s too clean to be my house.) The books are all packed, the furniture is rearranged, the family pictures are gone. I’m camping out in my own home.

I thought I’d have a horrible time with it. This is (was) the first place we ever bought. We have two family cats planted under the plum tree out back. My gardens are here. The Bear was born in the living room. This is the place where we weathered Mr. MG’s long absence. But months of voiding our personality from the house have made it less dear. It’s time to move on; it’s really time to get the books out of storage.

So tonight I will be polishing and cleaning well into the wee hours. Tomorrow I will begin to let go. Then we’ll see just how much I’m ready for this.

In the meantime – Let’s catapult!

What if we read Tivo’s like tea leaves? What would your hard drive say about you? Right now on my Tivo:

• Shaun of the Dead – Not as funny as I’d thought it would be. Still worth it for the scene where they beat a zombie with pool cues to a Queen song on the jukebox.
• Without a Trace – Not just for me; I record it for my folks.
• Lost – Started out just recording it for my mom. Now I’m hooked and in need of therapy. I’m worried about John Locke.
• The Safari Dentist – The Tivo picked this out for me. I was hoping it was about a dentist to wildlife (Cheetahs with gold caps!), but instead it’s a guy who fixes the teeth of tribal folks whose teeth are being rotted out because the tourists keep handing out candy to the kids. My idea is more fun.
• Blues Clues. Like, 15 episodes. – The Bear loves the songs and the bright colors. (Mr. MG: “But every show is the same! You gotcher clues, yer mail, skiddoo, so long! It NEVER CHANGES!”) The Princess likes it because the Bear likes it. Plus, it’s predictable and comforting, like mashed potatoes. And no mean people.

No matter how much you want milk for your coffee, no matter how desperate you are, do not use expired evaporated milk from the back of the pantry. Contrary to what you might suppose, canned goods do go bad at some point. And they may taste fine, but you will be buying Pepto later in the day if you try this stunt.

(And yes, the chunks should have tipped me off. But it takes coffee to get me to think in the morning, and coffee requires milk.)

Well, no. But it’s a free lecture about the medieval origins of Valentine’s Day from the Teaching Company, which is even better.

This was an interesting Valentine’s Day. The Princess is down with a particularly mean cold, and spent the day holed up on the futon. The Bear decided that today was a great day to flex his toddler independence, and balled up his fists and yelled, “Aaaaaa!” whenever he was given direction. Sometimes twice, for added emphasis.

I wish I could do that. Wouldn’t it be fun? The commissary is out of organic bananas? Aaaaa! Cut off in traffic? Get out of the car and Aaaaa! Great idea for a project, but can’t do it because all my craft stuff is packed? Kick the box! Aaaa! AAAAA! The world would be a better place – or at least funnier – if we were allowed to holler right where and when we got frustrated. The typical office environment would be a lot different.

BigBossMan: Jones, that report on rotomicron diagnostics is due at four o’clock.

WorkerBee: Aaaa! Aaaaa! Aa!

BigBossMan: Right. See you at the briefing.

When supper time rolled around, I finally just put the Bear on my back. He was happy, I was happy, and I was freed up to make our traditional Valentine’s Day pancakes (heart-shaped, of course). From Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything”:

Basic Pancakes

2 c. all-purpose flour
1 Tbs. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. sugar
1 or 2 eggs
1 1/2 c. milk
2 Tbs. melted and cooled butter (optional), plus unmelted butter for cooking, or use oil

I sprinkle frozen blueberries on them before the first turn, and for VD we top them with strawberry syrup – home made this year, thanks to a failed batch of jam – and whipped cream. Mmmm. Tasty enough to rally the appetite of an ailing Princess, and sweeten up a crabbypants Bear!

No! Not the candy! Never the candy! It will take extreme words, even threats, from my dentist to get me to do something that radical. And since he’s a mild-mannered, sunny kinda guy, I don’t think it’s going to happen for a while yet. So pass the Hot Tamales!

But I digress.

Last summer I read this, and it stuck. After quitting smoking, working out a bit and not eating, having a baby, joining a gym for a month, having another baby, and dealing with life through cookie therapy, I had yo-yo-ed my way to 25 pounds above where I started. Somehow, imagining what it equaled in sugar bags got to me. I joined a gym four days later.

And I couldn’t sneak out of the commitment this time. Since the Bear is terrified of strangers, my in-laws said they would love to take the kids three times a week so I could go. If I get lazy and play hookey, I get a phone call asking where are the grandkids. Built in accountability.

So I went. It’s one of those all-women places, with serious Oprah overtones. Yech. But while I’m there, I don’t have to fold laundry. I don’t have to wipe anyone else’s nose or butt. As much as I love being Mama, I love that I get to have my first name back for half an hour. And it started to feel good to go, like it feels good to eat when you’re hungry. I started liking it. That certainly never happened before.

The other night, after eight months, the scale said I’d put the sugar bags down. I’m back to my college weight. (Although, after two kids, it’s arranged a lot differently.) I wasn’t exactly Jessica Rabbit to begin with, but now I’m shaped a little less like Opus.

From Thicket:

1. What celebrity do you most look like? Mebbe I have a messed up self image, but I truly don’t see myself in anyone. (I even have a hard time seeing my likeness in my kids. If I ever saw me commit a crime, I’d be pretty much useless when the forensic artist questioned me.) No one ever tells me I look like anyone, either.

2. Where is Heaven? At Dairy Queen, of course!

3. Why do you get up every morning? IOW, what drives you? I like to see where the day takes me. I want to do right by my kids and family. I want to please God and live out His will for me. And I want more cookies.

For people like this, you need something a whole lot bigger and uglier. Something raw and brutal and humiliating. Because that’s what they did to their kids.

A young couple are accused of critically injuring their 6-month-old baby, who police say was sexually assaulted, suffered broken bones from head to toe, and had her tongue nearly severed.

The 15 month old sister had a fractured skull and ribs as well.

It was hard to regain my vision after reading this. The only answer to this kind of behavior is to send them to answer to their children’s Creator. But not too quickly. And I don’t mean the protracted legal process. This couple needs to be a living, breathing (well, temporarily) billboard as to why this is a bad idea, even if you only value your own skin. The punishment of these two monsters should be a spectacle.

…it just goes on and on, my friends. You know those friendship questuestionares that you get in your e-mail that ask you if you like bananas or kiwi? Or if you are a dog person or a wombat person? This is like that. Only it’s a blog thing. And it’s shorter. So…

First, recommend to me:

1. A movie

2. A book

3. A musical artist, song, or album

Next, I want everyone who reads this to ask me three questions, no more, no less. Ask me anything you want. (I will respond in subsequent posts. I reserve the right to not answer questions that might hurt someone else or that might be grossly inappropriate for my blog.)

Then, I want you to go to your blog, copy and paste this allowing your friends to ask you anything they want!

I know it should seem obvious. I mean, how could I have forgotten? In all of the daily grousing, in all the discipline (root word: disciple), in all the running around, I just forgot.

My daughter loves me.

She desperately wants to please me. Not because it gets her anything, but because she loves me. She hates the daily struggle and friction that comes with growth. I think she is surprised at herself sometimes when she makes bad choices and gets in trouble. (“Now, why on earth did I do that?”) But, at the end of the day, she loves me.

Sometimes I forget that love. I never ever stop loving her, but sometimes it is hard to believe she could love me back. I am the heavy in the family. I am The One With the Rules. I get in the way of her doing what she wants, and am usually the one who calls down the thunder when she goes wrong. How could she love someone like that? And when I forget her love for me, it is easy to crush her spirit and stomp on her feelings, instead of guiding her to right choices. And if I crush and stomp long enough, I am going to do some real damage.

I need to be better at discipling her. I need to bring her along side me and parent with grace.

It’s true about home schooling teaching the parent as much as the child. I didn’t figure this would kick in until upper grades. I was thinking Calculus and Biology. But I got some schooling yesterday from the Princess’s second grade Grammar assignment. One part was to create two sentences starting with the words “You were.” She told me that she wrote them to me.

1. You were a good teacher.

2. You were a good cook.

She used her schoolwork to tell me she loves me. And now I have homework to do.