It Must Be Almost Time To Go

Because I have officially reached the point where I am thinking that it would have been easier if I had just planned to stay home alone with the kids instead of accompanying my husband on this out-of-town jaunt.

The last three days have been a nonstop exercise in cleaning, cooking, shopping, and laundry to get everything in a leavable state here.  Notifying everyone (bus drivers, teachers, schools) that my in-laws will be with the kids.  Writing down all the notes for how much to feed the dog and the school bus times and who has which sporting event where and when (etc etc) while we're gone.  Plus a meeting Monday night and a baseball game last night.  I am very, very tired.

And I haven't even begun to pack yet.  Barely even thought about it, to be honest.  Which is a problem since there will doubtless be at least a few catty females who will care about what I'm wearing once I get there.  And I've been informed that we are leaving between 6 and 7 tomorrow morning, which (knowing my husband) means that he will be up by 5 and in the car by 5:45, impatient to be off!

Ugh.

 

I Have Officially Exhausted My Right Brain For The Week

As much as I love to bake, this was not the week to have to create a beautiful cake (let alone two!) for teachers at our school and present them in a fancy manner.  We leave tomorrow for a long weekend trip, and I am officially a basket case.  Today is going to be one of those days, I can just tell.  And of course, it's pouring rain, too.

But, I did make my cakes and deliver them to school.  I found this recipe online, which looked pretty and not too terribly complicated.

This is what my cakes looked like:

Not quite as pretty as the one on the website, but the heck with it.  (Notice the dog in the background?  Just saw that!  She invariably sleeps where she can keep one eye on me.)

And as wrapped and ready to deliver:

Now, to return to the regularly scheduled programming of cleaning and packing and writing childcare instructions for my in-laws!

Help!!

Three-day absolutely CRAZY week coming up, followed by a long weekend out of town (sans kids, at least) for a event of my husband's.

Since I am the queen of Post-Its and calendars, I just sat down to write out the list of everything I have to get done between now and Thursday morning, and realized with dull horror that this is also the week (of course, it would be...) when I need to bring in two cakes for Teacher Appreciation Week at school!  These are given as gifts to individual teachers--parent bakers contribute one for each teacher.

Now, I love to bake.  And this task (for which I cheerfully volunteered, not thinking about the calendar) would normally be right up my alley.  But these cakes are supposed to be fancy and beautiful, and this is SO not the week for me to have time to pull that together.  Not if I plan to get any sleep at all before Thursday, anyway.

So I ask: can any of you recommend a recipe for a cake that looks beautiful and special but isn't terribly time-consuming to make??  Pretty please?  ;)

The Perils Of Boy Laundry

Curiously, when I arrived to collect Thing One from his friend's birthday party/sleepover this morning, he was out in the front yard collecting salamanders with two of his buddies.  In his pajamas.  Upon closer inspection, I also noted three band-aids on him that had not been there the evening before, plus a thick caking of dirt from one end to the other...he even had some inside his nose and ears.  From the boy standpoint, a very successful party indeed!  The party-hosting friend has a veritable menagerie of pets that includes a snake and several large tarantulas, none of which (thank the Lord) appear to have stowed away in his bag.  I suppose I should be grateful that he only wants to add a salamander to our own menagerie after this experience.

But you can bet that I will be checking his pockets very carefully before I wash the dirty clothes he brought home.  And possibly wearing gloves while I do it!

Laughter Really Is The Best Medicine

Had a rotten day yesterday.  It was a blivot of a day, to start: events and responsibilities positively overflowing the bounds of the day and my patience.  Topped off, to add insult to injury, with a report that my boys have been acting up on the school bus.

Woke up still annoyed this morning, with a bruised knee from yesterday's taekwondo class to boot.  Made the correct and adult (but aggravating!) decision to sit out this morning's class so as not to worsen the injury, then spent two hours dealing with paperwork relating to various bureaucratic things (tedious) and Thing One's eventual appointment with the doctor who will tell us if he has ADD or is just bored at school or both (upsetting.)  By the time I dropped off his doctor's admission paperwork at her office, I was really not in a good mood.

Fortunately, I also had plans to get together with some of my taekwondo girlfriends for lunch today.  Seven of us met for Thai food, and the conversation had us laughing so hard we were crying!  My mascara was running by the time we left the restaurant, two hours after we first sat down.  And in those two hours, my whole outlook on the day shifted.

Which is a really good thing, since Himself jetted off to New Orleans this morning for Jazzfest with the guys and won't be back till Sunday.  We'll see if there's still a smile on my face by the time he gets back!      

Lieb and Let Lieb

Recently, Mom on the Edge (who writes about multicultural and special needs parenting over at Mom in Two Cultures) nominated me for a Liebster Award.

Like her, I hadn't heard of it before being nominated...apparently this is an award given to up and coming bloggers (not my words!) who have fewer than 200 followers.  According to Google Translate, "Liebster" means "dearest" in German--hey, it's been a long time since the last German class I took in college--so I'll take the nomination as a compliment and run with it.

The rules vary widely depending on where you look, but are generally as follows:

1) Answer 11 questions posed by the blogger who nominated you
2) Post 11 random facts about yourself
3) Pass the award along to 11 fellow bloggers
4) Pose your own set of 11 questions to those bloggers

Here goes:

These are the questions posed by MotE:

1) What's your favorite TV show?
Big Bang Theory.  No question.

2) Which app do you wish existed but doesn't?
Honestly can't think of one.  Either pretty sad, or a tribute to the ingenuity of app developers.

3) If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?
Greece. Still on my lifetime bucket list.  Would love to ride the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express too.

4) With which cartoon character do you most identify?
The mother in the Baby Blues comic strip.  Does that count??

5) Which is worse, cooking or cleaning?
Cleaning!!  I like cooking and am an enthusiastic baker.

6) What's your favorite book?
No possible way to answer this question--too many possibilities!!  Pride and Prejudice, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Murder with Peacocks (Donna Andrews--one of the funniest books I've ever read), Jane Eyre, Murder on the Orient Express, and Little Women would all make the short list.  

7) What's your earliest memory?
Pretending to be asleep when my mother came upstairs to check on me at naptime.  I must have been three or four.

8) Do you like roller coasters (literally, not figuratively?)
Not anymore.  I did as a child, but now trying to keep my head from banging around on them gives me headaches!  My husband gets ride duty at the county fair and amusement parks.

9) Are you good in math?
I got all the way through calculus II with very respectable grades but hated every minute of it!  My brain does better with words than numbers.  

10) What's your pet peeve?
People who walk slowly in front of me when I'm in a hurry!  And rude children.  (May I have two??)

11) Why do you blog?
It's a creative outlet, an opportunity to vent and/or opine, and a source of connection with like-minded people whom I'd never 'meet' otherwise! 


And 11 random facts...

1) I played the trumpet in my university's marching band.  (At various times in my life, I have played the trumpet, organ, saxophone, drums, flute and guitar.) 

2) My family was evacuated to Germany from Tehran, Iran when the Shah fell in 1979. My dad had just taken a job there a few months previously. We lost a good chunk of our household goods and two dogs when we left (thankfully, an Iranian colleague of Dad's took in the dogs to save them.) 

3) The only 911 call I've ever made was to report a runaway horse.  No joke.

4) In high school and college, I participated in a lot of Model United Nations events. Worst one ever was being assigned to portray Iraq a month after Saddam Hussein's forces invaded Kuwait! 

5) I speak Mandarin Chinese passably well and understand some German. 

6) I have a Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology.

7) I have been inside the Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt. Very cool unless you are claustrophobic--fortunately, I'm not. Have also been inside King Tut's tomb.  

8) My husband has to watch Notre Dame football games for me and tell me what's going on, since I get too emotionally involved in the games when I actually sit in front of the TV!

9) I played varsity high-school basketball. No surprise given my height. I was less than useful between the keys (slow with dubious ball-handling skills) but effective under the basket at both ends. 

10) I get great joy out of working in my garden in the summer. As a kid forced to help my mom in the yard, I swore that when I had a home of my own I would dig out all the dirt, replace it with concrete, and paint the concrete green, but that has not happened. My kids and I have fun growing vegetables and fruit in our little patch out back (which we have to fence to keep the deer out!) 

11) I don't much care for the beach. (Heresy, I know, but there it is.) 


I hereby tag the following bloggers:

(FYI, I'm not paying much attention to the number of followers these bloggers have--just tagging the bloggers whose answers I am interested in seeing!  And if I get 11, it will be dumb luck...the rules vary on that too and I am not that uptight.)

1) Momo Fali (http://www.momofali.com/)
2) NOLA (http://justicewithbiscuits.blogspot.com/)
3) Ameena (http://fancythatfancythis.com/)
4) Lady Jennie (http://aladyinfrance.com/)
5) Solitary Diner (http://solitarydiner.blogspot.com/)
6) Stacey (http://anymommyoutthere.com/)
7) Anthea (http://reluctantmemsahib.wordpress.com/)


My questions for them:

1) Dogs or cats?
2) Which do you like better: jewel colors or pastels?
3) Gold or silver/platinum?
4) What is your dream weekend?
5) What would be the first thing you'd change about yourself if you could?
6) What is your favorite thing about yourself?
7) What is your favorite quotation?
8) If you were to die tomorrow, what would be your last meal request?
9) List the five words that best describe you.
10) Do you see the cup as half full or half empty?
11) Why do you blog?

Tagged bloggers, please put a link to your response (should you choose to accept the "honor") in the comments!

Physics Laws Of Cartoons

Your friendly neighborhood cartoon fan and science nerd did not write these, but wishes she had!!

Cartoon Law I

Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation.
Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over.

Cartoon Law II

Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly.
Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the stooge's surcease.

Cartoon Law III

Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter.
Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.

Cartoon Law IV

The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.
Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it inevitably unsuccessful.

Cartoon Law V

All principles of gravity are negated by fear.
Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel them directly away from the earth's surface. A spooky noise or an adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole. The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight.

Cartoon Law VI

As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.
This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled.

A wacky character has the option of self-replication only at manic high speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.

Cartoon Law VII

Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot.
This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space.

The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not of science.

Cartoon Law VIII

Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.
Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify.

Corollary:

A cat will assume the shape of its container.
Cartoon Law IX

Everything falls faster than an anvil.
Cartoon Law X

For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.
This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead.

Cartoon Law Amendment A

A sharp object will always propel a character upward.
When poked (usually in the buttocks) with a sharp object (usually a pin), a character will defy gravity by shooting straight up, with great velocity.

Cartoon Law Amendment B

The laws of object permanence are nullified for "cool" characters.
Characters who are intended to be "cool" can make previously nonexistent objects appear from behind their backs at will. For instance, the Road Runner can materialize signs to express himself without speaking.

Cartoon Law Amendment C

Explosive weapons cannot cause fatal injuries.
They merely turn characters temporarily black and smokey.

Cartoon Law Amendment D

Gravity is transmitted by slow-moving waves of large wavelengths.
Their operation can be wittnessed by observing the behavior of a canine suspended over a large vertical drop. Its feet will begin to fall first, causing its legs to stretch. As the wave reaches its torso, that part will begin to fall, causing the neck to strech. As the head begins to fall, tension is released and the canine will resume its regular proportions until such time as it strikes the ground.

Cartoon Law Amendment E

Dynamite is spontaneously generated in "C-spaces" (spaces in which cartoon laws hold).
The process is analogous to steady-state theories of the universe which postulated that the tensions involved in maintaining a space would cause the creation of hydrogen from nothing. Dynamite quanta are quite large (stick sized) and unstable (lit). Such quanta are attracted to psychic forces generated by feelings of distress in "cool" characters (see Amendment B, which may be a special case of this law), who are able to use said quanta to their advantage. One may imagine C-spaces where all matter and energy result from primal masses of dynamite exploding. A big bang indeed.