Herbert and Me

Now that the kids are in school all day, it’s just me and the guinea pig.

Things went well the first day.  We were very polite with each other.  I gave him carrots on request, he didn’t pee on me when I held him.  But I think we are starting to get on each other’s nerves.  For instance, there was this little exchange yesterday afternoon.

Me:  Dude, your cage stinks.

Herbie:  (mimicking me in a high voice) Dude your cage stinks.

Me:  Well, it does.

Herbie: (still mimicking) Well, it does.

Me:  Stop that.

Herbie:  (little $#*% is still mimicking) Stop that.

etc.

Seriously?  He thinks he’s all cute and stuff, but he does have an attitude.  To begin with, carrots are his staple, his peanut butter and jelly, his moon, his sun, his everything.  He gets them several times a day, and he loves them.  But yesterday he was all, “You need to change things up, and soon.  I could use some cantaloupe or watermelon maybe.  You know, I’ve always wanted to try papaya, get one of those, wouldja?”  

I’m just saying, the word “please” would go a long way. 

Also, his cage really does stink.  I just cleaned it and gave him new pine shavings on Monday (and yes, a “thank you” would have been nice), but he poops and pees so darn much, it’s like a sewage treatment plant in there. On a hot summer day.  When the humid air is still and heavy with the stench of  rodents.  Because he is one.

[awkward pause]

I’m sorry.  I love our sweet Herbert.  I think the echo of the lonely house is getting to me.  Honestly, it’s nice to have a little friend around for company.  A little pal who loves to squeak and snuggle, and eat…papaya apparently, and poop a lot, and make constant demands, and who, quite frankly has let a few curse words loose the last couple of days, which he knows he can’t do around the children, but I think he’s getting sloppy in his solitude.  As am I.

We are lonely. Okay, see right now, I’m on a roll here, getting these words down out of my head, and he’s behind me chanting “Ninety-nine Bottles of  Beer on the Wall”, and although he’s currently at “take one down, and pass it around, 42 bottles of beer…” which means he is more than halfway there, and I realize I shouldn’t stifle his creativity or need to perform, but is it fair that he’s currently stifling my creativity and need to perform?  No.  It is not.  It is so not fair.  The little buck-toothed fuzzy-faced devil.  “That’s right, Herbie!  I’m writing about you!  Your filthy manners are being exposed!  Everyone will know about your rudeness and toilet habits… and…”

Yes, the loneliness is getting to me.

 

Awww.  Look at that picture.  Look how cute he is.  Sweet little fella.  Maybe I’ll take him grocery shopping with me later!  He could sit in the grocery cart seat and ask for things he can’t have and give me little kisses every now and then, and then I’ll take him to the playground and push him on the swing, and he’ll say,”More!  More!  Push me higher!” and then we can come home and play a few rounds of “Monopoly Jr.” and have a really great time together!

Yeah.  Maybe that’s what I’ll do. 

Me and Herbie.  Because sometimes, a guinea pig is all a person’s got.

(Seriously, if anyone wants to go for lunch, I am available!)

First Day

So yesterday I wrote a post about how I was feeling for the first day of school, with intentions of adding the photos this morning and then publishing it for you, but when I reread what I wrote yesterday, I decided to scrap it.  It was very wistful and introspective, because that’s how I was feeling yesterday.  I’ve got two milestones going on this year…a first grader (all day!) and a middle schooler (this is the tough one for me), and of course a 4th grader, which was the easy part.

                                                                                               Excited but nervous.

But now that they’re on their buses, I’m just feeling elation!  Does that make me a bad mom?  Don’t answer that.  Most of the summer was great!  I found myself saying, somewhere in mid-July to more than one person (multiple witnesses) that we had been enjoying the best summer ever.  Very little arguing, we were having fun together, just the right balance of structure and freedom.  But last week?

“I was sitting there!”

“But you got up.”

“To go to the bathroom!  Get out of my chair!”

“NO!  You got up, it’s my seat now!”

“Mooo-om!”

Seriously?  This one argument happened over and over, many times a day for the entire week.  It seemed like a little fad…steal someone’s seat, even if you don’t want it, to drive them (and mom) crazy.  And it did (drive me crazy).  So excuuuuuse me if I felt elation this morning!

Grumpy 4th grader (smiled because I told him to) and excited first grader.

Maddie asked me yesterday if I remembered my first day of middle school, and I couldn’t.  In fact the only first day of school I really remember was kindergarten.  I recall being herded off of the bus, into the school lobby.  I was so excited and happy to be in kindergarten.  But there were other kids there crying, and I remember thinking, “Hmm.  Looks like I’m supposed to be crying.”  So I did. I remember very clearly that I wasn’t scared or sad, but that it was a conscious decision to cry.  I got a little attention from one of the teachers there, who patted me on the back and said some kind things to me, which was a little bonus!

Goodbye school bus!  Goodbye Maddie, Ben, and Jack! I can’t wait to see you after school, but until then, all the chairs are mine, and I won’t be arguing over them with anyone!

The Coupon

I really do consider my mom to be one of my best friends.  Sure she drives me crazy too, she is my mom after all, but we talk on the phone several times a week, get together for lunch or shopping when we can, and she is the only other person in the world besides Dave who will listen with rapt attention and be genuinely interested when I blab on about all the (questionably) cute stuff my kids do. 

I say that because I’m going to share a conversation we had the other day that struck me as sort of funny, but I want you to know I’m not making fun of her.  This is just my mom.

We were in the car together headed to Target, the kids in the back seat.

Mom:  Oh!  I found a really good coupon for you.

Me:  Oh good, what’s it for?

Mom:  That yogurt you like.

[I actually do not like yogurt….I eat it when I’m trying to feel healthy and calorie conscious, but I do not actively like it, so I’m not really sure which yogurt she’s referring to.]

Me:  Which one is that?

Mom:  You know.  That yogurt.  The one you like.

Maddie (being helpful from the back seat):  Is it Chobani?

Mom:  What?  Cho…what did you say?

Me:  Chobani.

Mom:  What is Chobani?

Me:  It’s a kind of yogurt. 

Mom:  No.  It’s not Cho…that one.  You would know it.  It’s a very popular yogurt.

Me:  Yoplait?  Dannon?  Activia?

Maddie:  I bet it’s Chobani!

Mom:  No, I would remember a name like that.   It’s that kind you like.

Me:  Well, I eat Chobani the most, are you sure it’s not that?

Mom:  Let me see if I can find it. [rummages through purse…for at least a minute]  I can’t find it.  Anyway, it was a really good coupon.  I cut it out because I know you really like this yogurt.

Me:  Well, thank you!  Let me know when you find it.

Mom: Oh, do you want it now? I’ll keep looking.  Do you need yogurt?

Me:  You don’ t need to keep looking, I just meant when you find it, you can give it to me…someday.

Mom:  No, I am going to find it, that way you have it.  Since I know it’s your favorite. [rummages through purse once more]  I wish I could remember what it was called.

Me: Oh, it doesn’t matter.  Was it Oikos?

Mom:  What?  Oikos?  What is that? 

Me:  It’s a kind of Greek yogurt.

Mom:  That’s what it is!  It’s Greek yogurt!   I know you like that Greek yogurt, and it was a really good coupon!

Me:  Oh good.  I do like Greek yogurt.  I bet it’s for Chobani.

Mom:  Cho…what?  What is that?

Me:  Never mind.

Mom:  Oh!  Here it is!  Look!  It’s $1.50 off 5 yogurts!  That’s pretty good isn’t it?  Let me see, it’s for…Yoplait Greek Yogurt.  I knew it wasn’t that Cho one you said.  Anyway, I’ll put it here and the next time you go shopping you can save $1.50!

~~~~~~~~

Seriously?  I was rolling my eyes inside my head through most of that conversation. “Just give me the darn coupon when you find it!  The name of the yogurt just doesn’t matter!  I probably won’t use it anyway!” is what I wanted to say.  But I didn’t.  Because she’s my mom and I love her and I’m glad she cares enough to cut out coupons for me. 

And did I mention she’s a Red Hatter???  She’s the one wearing red and purple.

(Hahahaha!  And standing all the way on the right!)

(Yes, those are purple shoes with a red hat appliqued on them).

(I love you mom!)

New Traditions

I almost hate to say it, because I know you will all be so sad, but today marks the end of my beach posts. 

Go ahead and take a moment to grab a tissue, take a deep breath, and pull yourself together.  I’ll wait.

[dramatic pause]

Are you ready?  Okay.

In my continuing series on “Comparing and Contrasting Cape May to the Outer Banks:  Dear God, When Will It End?”, I feel the need to acknowledge the close of certain OBX traditions and the start of new Cape May traditions.  For instance, we had to say goodbye to our yearly Water Balloon Fight, as the house in Cape May was a tad bit fahncier than our OBX house and I think we were all a little worried about behaving like fahncy people with manners, not wild and crazy common folk.

So while we bid a fond farewell to smashing Grandma in the head with a water bomb, we are hoping that as our years in Cape May begin and continue in future years, we will have some new traditions to anticipate.

The activity I think most of us adults enjoyed the most will probably be Mike and Nicole’s seafood dinner.  All of the families take turns cooking dinner for everyone, and this year Dave’s brother Mike and his girlfriend Nicole joined Mike’s friend Dan on his fishing boat and they actually caught us dinner!

Mike grilling shrimp that… um…actually came from Costco. 

But the crabs in that box came from the Atlantic that afternoon!

Dave’s sister is just kidding…she didn’t really eat the shell!  (I think.)

They also caught an abundance of striper and bluefish.  Oh dear, it was all so good. 

Our nephew Nick.

Another tradition we’d like to see continue was riding the Waverunners.  The (young and old) kids loved this so much. 

Unfortunately, you needed to be 16 to drive.  Next year, our nephew Tyler will turn 16 a few days before our beach trip!

We also headed to the Cape May Lighthouse at Cape May Point.  Dave and Jack climbed to the top, but Ben is a bit afraid of heights, and Maddie’s feet were tired and torn up from the pebbles on the ocean floor all week, so I stayed down at the bottom with them.

We also went to Sunset Beach to search for Cape May diamonds. This was a quiet, peaceful beach.  I’d love to head here every year.

Another beach tradition is to bring on the games.  Our favorites are Catchphrase, Apples to Apples, and this year we took along Hedbanz.  Teehee.  Grandma was Underwear!!

We always try to get a group picture for Grandma’s Christmas card.  (I also try, mostly without success, to get a Christmas card picture all week long…I’ll show you all of  those failures closer to Christmas.)

So, we have come to the end of my beach posts. If you have stuck with me this long, I have a bonus photo just for you to see.  Don’t tell anyone else, this one is just between you and me.

Yes!  That’s me on a boogie board!  About to hit two very frightened five year olds (I didn’t though, don’t worry). 

Then we all went home and reunited with Herbie and I did about 5,072 loads of laundry and mowed our jungle of a lawn and went school shopping and bought sneakers for everyone and a Phineas and Ferb lunch box among other things, and then we hosted 2 giant earth movers in our front yard for 5 days to fix the giant sinkhole that appeared there last spring and now we have 6 more days until school starts!  And I pretend to be sad about that around the kids, only you know that I am secretly jumping for joy inside myself because for the last week or so they have been arguing and bugging each other (and me) like crazy!

And thus ends my Fabulous Beach Series.  Thankyouverymuch.

Photo Booth Memories

You know those photo booths you find in places like arcades and boardwalks?  Well, I love those things.  My parents have a strip of one from their honeymoon, and then they have a few with baby me, then toddler me, then big girl me.  I’m not sure there are any with my brothers-- for some reason my parents stopped doing the photo booths before they were born.  Probably they just weren’t as photogenic as I was.

Dave and I had been joining his family for their annual beach trip for a few years before we actually got married, and I always insisted we do the photo booths, and then we continued to do them after we got married, and then we added Maddie in to the pictures… but we don’t have any with Ben or Jack (who are extremely photogenic) because by then we were in the Outer Banks (which really needs to put a darn photo booth somewhere!)

A week before our trip, I found the envelope filled with our old photo booth strips!  I had completely forgotten about the photo booths over the years, so I was so excited to realize we’d be headed to a place that had them.  I showed them to the kids and they got excited too.  It was cool to watch us age.  Well, it was not so cool to see me age, but you get the picture. 

L-R-1995, 1996, 1997

L-R-1998, 2000, 2001

Our last day in Cape May, we all crowded into the booth.  But either they make the booths smaller nowadays, or there are just too dang many of us!  On our first try, we could hardly see Jack in any of the pictures, we kept trying to lift him up, but we just couldn’t get him in the frame.  Also, we were all laughing hysterically.  It was truly one of my fondest memories of the trip.

We put in another three dollars and tried again.  This time we had the three kids posing with orders to rush out after the second picture, when Dave and I would rush in for our turn.  This too was very funny.  I’m sure we entertained any and all onlookers outside of that photo booth.

And here they are.

                                    Geez Louise, when did I get so old?

Jack decided to spend three of his own dollars to have a private photo session, and this may be my favorite one of all.

Thank you photo booth!  I heart you!  See you next year!

Boardwalk!

Are you tired of my beach posts yet?  Well, too bad.  Go read about Tyson’s dinner date or Meg’s quirky rainbow craft or Stephanie’s lucky husband. Or you could head over to Tara, who is also milking her beach trip for all its worth.  Or you can stop whining and read on.  Sheesh.

Almost more than anything else, we have missed the boardwalk!  We never found one anywhere in the northern Outer Banks.  A mere 10 minutes away from the quiet charm of Cape May is the excitement of Wildwood, NJ.  The boardwalk is two jam-packed miles of rides, games, junk food, t-shirt and flip-flop shops, mini-golf,  and complete and utter awesomeness!  There is a tram to carry you if you’re tired (“Watch the tram car, please.  Watch the tram car, please.  Watch the tram car, please”…that recorded message is still playing over and over in my head), but we only walked about a half mile and back.

First we had to have boardwalk pizza, which is dough-diddly delicious.

After that, Jack spent two of his own dollars trying to win a big stuffed Angry Bird from the giant claw machine.  He lost.  So good old Uncle Mike tried too.

I love the looks on all of their faces!

Uncle Mike lost too.  Many times.  God bless uncles.

We headed to the Go Carts next!

And then more games…


And after spending many more dollars than it was worth, Uncle Mike finally won Jack an Angry Bird!

And a big blow up bat for hitting his brother!!!

Time for a snack.  We ate nothing healthy.  We ate nothing with fiber and vitamins and nutrients.   We ate… fried oreos, frozen custard, cotton candy, funnel cakes, and Polish Water Ice, washed down with lemonade (hey!  Vitamin C!  Healthy!)

These are not the smiling faces of children eating broccoli.

Who knew you could fry Oreos?  And then sprinkle it with powdered sugar?

Oh funnel cake, how I love you.

And then someone started getting tired.

Side effect of the cotton candy, don’tcha know.

So we headed back to the quiet and peace of Cape May, where visions of fried oreos and funnel cakes danced in everyone’s heads. (Though that could have been the heartburn talking).
Next post:  Memory Lane or possibly New Traditions...and then I think that's it for the beach posts.

The Houses of Cape May

So we spent last week in Cape May, NJ.  This was our first time in about ten years to be back in Cape May, as we’d been going to the Outer Banks instead with Dave’s family every year.  Last time we were in Cape May, Maddie and I looked like this:

Ben was born two days after we got home!

While we love the Outer Banks, we were so happy to be back in Cape May.  I think what sets Cape May apart from many seaside towns is that it doesn’t shut down after October.  Cape May is home to a very large population of locals who obviously care for their town.  There are no large hotels (like Marriott or Hilton), only smaller, locally owned hotels and lots of B & B’s.  Many houses date back to the early 1900’s (or earlier), flower beds and flower boxes are plentiful and well-tended, and many of the newer, more modern beach houses have an old fashioned look to them. 

One morning, Dave and I left the kids with the family and headed out on a bike ride together.

And of course I brought my camera.

I love this fence…many homes have gorgeous wrought iron or picket fences.  You’ll see lots of American flags flying too.

I love all of the gingerbread! 

We have a painting (print) of this house, The Pink House, by Alice Steer Wilson, so we were excited to show the kids the real house!

The Angel of the Sea…one of the larger hotels.

It was a hot day for a bike ride, and we were dripping by the time we headed back to our own beach house.

When Dave and I play the “What would you do if you won the lottery” game (not that we buy tickets) (okay fine, when the prize is a huge one we buy one ticket) (okay fine, once I bought 5 tickets and then told Dave I had really increased our chances because I bought five tickets, and he looked at me with a happy tear in his eye) (actually the tear was because he didn’t realize how very bad at math I was until that moment) a beach house in Cape May is one of our dreams.   You never know.  (Shut up!  Don’t burst my bubble!)

Next post:  The Boardwalk!