11 September 2015

Cupcake Dreams, Redux

In honor of this child's 9th birthday, I am reposting this gem, which, I must confess, I never tire of listening to.  Don't think I ever will.

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I want to be a kid again.  I want to tell stories the way my youngest daughter does.  I want to dream about cupcakes.  And I really, really want a Dream Teller of my very own.

During dinner last night, Little T was devouring my homemade spaghetti sauce and making me feel like Martha Stewart, Julia Child, and Ree Drummond, all rolled into one, and she mentioned that she knew she was going to have a good dinner tonight because her Dream Teller told her so.

Come again, daughter?

Your what?

That's right.  She has a Dream Teller.  Every morning, after a night of dreaming about cupcakes and unicorns and whatever other lovelies visit her while she is sleeping, her Dream Teller tells her what her dreams mean.  Here's last night's:



Actually, I don't want to be a kid again: I want to be THIS KID.

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09 September 2015

Kelly Corrigan, on illness

Kelly Corrigan has done it again: written something that resonates loudly and beautifully.

Take a moment to click through and read what she has to say about illness and what it wants from us.  She has indeed made herself useful with her words:




Thank you Kelly!

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08 September 2015

Cheapest, Best School Lunch EVER

Isn't it the greatest thing ever when you screw something up and have to settle for a really lame Plan B, only to be rewarded by a super awesome unforeseen consequence that basically makes you look brilliant?

That happened to me today! Yay!

We just came through one of the most soccer-packed, social-packed, traffic-packed, logistics-packed weekends of our lives, which is indeed saying something.  Before the weekend even started, I texted the following to my husband:

"Can you hear the circus music yet?  I CAN!"

My eldest saw that text in the car on the way home on Friday evening...he got a chuckle.

But I digress.  It's just that the weekend was so completely fricking insane that I couldn't manage to do any grocery shopping, so I had to settle for my last minute fall back: take the kids to Safeway in the morning on the way to school to get them breakfast and lunch.  But then, I was so sleep deprived, and in such a non-caffeine dither (no coffee in the house either!), that I completely forget to get off the freeway to go to Safeway.

No breakfast.  No lunch.  No plan.

My three oldest go to school in downtown Oakland, which is a lousy place for a person in search of groceries, especially at 7:45am.  So we made the very sad decision to get what we all call Gas Station Food.  We stopped at one of those food marts at a gas station and stared dismally at the selections before making some seriously depressing choices.  Off Lola went with her Cup Noodles, with a side of her mother's shame and guilt to chase it down.

That was my really lame Plan B.

But the brilliance!  The unforeseen brilliance!

When I picked her up after school, she happily announced that her buddy desperately wanted that Cup Noodles and gratefully traded her own lunch: a gourmet chicken caesar salad.  Lola was psyched.  I was relieved that she got to eat something besides a styrofoam cup full of sodium.  It was a win-win.

The best was yet to come, though.  Because then I came up with the BEST School Lunch Plan Ever, and the most Affordable.  I'm going to buy her a couple flats of those cup noodle things.  She'll be the most popular lunch trade in town, and all those other chumpy moms will buy the really good, organic, non-GMO, non-HFCS, locally sourced, locally grown, attractively packaged, liberal-heart-soothing lunches and their kids will trade with my kid.  Healthy lunch at processed food prices.

Bingo.

I just love that I learn something new every day, especially when it involves me being brilliant and not even knowing it.

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Open A Drawer

Today's 15 minute writing exercise, from The Observation Deck: A Tool Kit for Writers , by Naomi Epel ______________________ I thrust my...