zoo zoo

Having no children currently enrolled in public school and having not been in public school myself in a hundred years, "school vacation week" doesn't really mean anything to me. Except that there is a slight increase in the number of child-friendly activities going on. So, keep that in mind.

I am a very go-with-the-flow parent. I hardly ever know what we're doing until its on the very verge (hour wise) of happening. And even then plans often change 20 times during those hours. My children are not regularly enrolled in classes, sports, lessons, whatever. It is what it is.

However there is a children's thing.. group? that happens regularly that Lily absolutely flips her shit over and I try to take her as often as it fits into our lives. One of those instances was the first Monday of what I guess what school vacation week. It was going on several times during the day, but I choose the first one.. for a couple of reasons.

I figured if we missed it the first time, we'd still have a few more chances.  Smart, right? The other reason was.. oh, it's so early in the day that I bet most parents won't be that organized to get out for it and it won't be as crowded as will later in the day. Pff.

Oh, it was crowded alright. Crowded like 100 or so people in one room. At least. And when we walked by the room for the next group going on.. that number was about half. So, lesson learned- everyone else IS that organized and I should learn to navigate around it.

Anyway.. after that we toured the zoo. Yup, on the first day of school vacation week. It was.. okay. It actually wasn't super terrible as the landscape of a zoo is a much larger space than just one room and the hundreds of people were spread out enough that.. we could ya know.. wander around easier.

(Although it was interesting to see the number of older kids (and adults!) that totally didn't care about jumping right in front of a 2-year old. Or getting in the middle of a picture his mother was trying to take of said 2-year old watching the fish that were right at his eye level.)

Unbelievably, the only problem of that day was just the normal Lily doesn't like to be at the mercy of anyone else's agenda. It's worse when a 2-year old little brother that doesn't walk as fast and also wants to look at things longer than she does is on the scene. But we got through it with no one being murdered, lost, or kidnapped. Or completely losing their parental-shit. I did however require more coffee and "quiet time" when we got home.

My camera also broke. Temporarily, of course. Just while we were at the zoo though. The next day, when I sat down to "fix it".. it no longer required fixing. Thank goodness for modern technology.

the easter

Now that Easter is over by a full week, I guess I have procrastinated enough about it.

For me, Easter really started the day before, on Saturday. When I went to Target to pick up a few things for Noah. He's difficult because although he will accept any and all presents with wheels, he already has 900 cars, trucks, vans, buses, etc varying in sizes from matchbox to almost as big as he is. He also doesn't eat candy (mostly because he's 2 and I don't let him eat candy) and isn't all that interested in presents in general anyway. SO.. it took me until the day before Easter to really even get him anything. He's also with me 99% of the time, and although I'm sure I could get away with buying things right in front of him, I just hadn't.

I found him a box of interesting crayons (even though we have 900 of those also), a small purple dinosaur (that he actually really likes although he doesn't care that much about stuffed animals either), and probably something else but as it was more than 5 seconds ago I can't remember.

I also saw A LOT of Easter baskets at my most local Target. Surprisingly a lot- easily several hundred. Easter baskets were not something we needed since we just reuse them from year to year, but I made a note to go back for a couple of these..

.. ninja and robot metal buckets on really what I consider to be my favorite part of the holidays.. the day after clearance.

(Target was closed on Sunday, but I got there at 8am on Monday, and you know what? Gone. Everything was gone. The supply went from several hundred on Saturday to less than 10 on Monday morning. And 9 of those 10 were broken. But..

I had to pick up a few real things later in the week, Wednesday I think, so I checked the Easter section again. And the section had magically refilled with about 60 baskets.. all different styles. Except instead of being 50% off, they were now all 90% off. Thank. You. Target.)

After Easter Bunny Target shopping there was egg decorating the night before..

.. and egg hunting and opening the next morning. The eggs really didn't have much of a chance. Lily found them all, while Noah didn't care one bit about any of it. Until he I opened one of the eggs in his basket and found a car in it.. then it was okay, see ya later Noah for the rest of the morning.

Then was the period of getting ready to leave the house for the day. Which is always a favorite of mine. (No it's not.)

I was really, really dreading the holiday drive even more than usual. Because I had to drive right through the middle of..

.. Boston. Holiday driving through a city is never anything I find awesome, but when you add in that it's Boston.. the day before the marathon.. especially when it's the first time after last year's terrorism. I thought it would be horrible (especially after the rice cooker incident at the previous week's memorial service. yes, seriously). With runners coming in, security, news crews, looky-loos, etc.

But.. other than a couple of spots of slight traffic for less than a minute, it was fine. Almost more fine than it normally was. And the weather was absolutely perfect. I mean, look at that sky..

Easter dinner was what it normally is with my children. For the last year or so Lily has finally consented to sit at the table and nibble at a few things from her plate. This year I didn't even have to pacify her with an Apple product. Noah on the other hand, is still in the midst of only running around and refusing to eat even one bite. I believe he finally did have a granola bar and some goldfish however.

Shortly after we ate, we left so that the rest of my extended family could take naps and rest up for their next encounter with my children and I.

And that was our Easter.

what normal must be like

The other day I found out we had an almost $300 credit with one of our utilities. A credit! "Thaaat's weird!" I said to the woman on the other end of the phone. She even double checked- it was true. I hung up with her, turned around to Noah in the back seat and yelled "That's weird!" at him. "GOOD weird! That NEVER happens to me! And that makes it even weirder!!" He just stared at me.

Today, I took my children out for errands. Which I rarely do. With both of them. To more than a quick trip to the post office and/or spree around Target. Most of the time I go when Lily is at school so it's just me and Noah.. and I am not outnumbered.

But.. too many things to do were piling up- like returns at the mall. The dreaded mall. (I said that out loud and had a great conversation with Lily about what dreaded means.) So.. off to the mall we all went. To go to three different stores.

I was preparing for it to be really, really horrible. I thought there would be running, yelling, crying, serious non-listening, etc. And.. there actually wasn't. The first store was.. fine. The second store was fine.. I even bought a couple of things for Noah. The third store was.. almost fine. The music was a little loud and Noah wasn't happy, but he chewed on my jacket for awhile and calmed down.

Honestly, I was scared. And suspicious. So naturally we then went to Target. Where I bought a lot of things. We were in the store for awhile. We walked and walked around the whole thing. Even into the Easter section. And my children were.. I don't know, what I assume normal children are like. Noah rode in the cart and Lily walked along with me. Like.. near me. By me. I didn't have to have a death grip on her for fear she'd take off at any second. She didn't even say one word about the toy section that I purposely and fully avoided.

It was like the twilight zone. So much so that at one point I just had to ask Lily if they were plotting against me. Her response? Possibly. I burst out laughing and thanked her for her honesty.

Still, I've been doing this too long to have pushed my luck any further.. we went home after that.

mailing failings

For the last few months I have been at the post office a lot. At least once a week, often two or three times. Most of the time it's fine, sometimes the line is long.. sometimes the other customers are beyond unprepared for their turn at the window, sometimes there are severe language barriers, etc. It is what it is.

There is one clerk that has been there for years.. I usually end up at her window and she's never given me a problem regarding anything I've mailed. I pay for things online, have her double check, get my receipt, and leave.

But.. then there's the other side of it all- the clerk that seems to really not especially like me. I get told different policies and rules all the time and it's such garbage. Their attitude is, at best, very "short" with most of their customers. Unless, I've noticed, the other person isn't speaking English. (I hope I'm wrong, but I've stood in that line enough times to see hundreds of other customers transactions, so..) Which has been going on for close to a year, except for the last few weeks that it seemed like they were slightly less unpleasant towards me. And it was fine. But..

Then there was today. Where every bit of distaste for me was back. And probably more. It was essentially the postal police. I was told I could not reuse one type of official post office product to mail in another method. (That's going to be a problem since 90% of my mailing supplies are reused.) For example, if someone sent me something in an Express envelope, I could not, disassemble it and reuse it for Priority mail. What? I even repeated what the clerk said and added "seriously?" to the end of it. Yup.. seriously.

I raised my eyebrows, looked away, and said uh, alriiight under my breath. But "just this once" the clerk allowed me to do it.

The usps policy is now reduce, reuse, recycle? I wonder if they know that. Whatever, happy Earth Day, right?

and so the 2014 garden begins

Winter hung on for so long in my part of the world, but now it's time for a garden again. Thankfully.

Lily and I planted seeds a few weeks ago and more than half of them are sprouting already. And some of them are really sprouting. The beans and pumpkins are definitely the stars so far. Ya, I know, pumpkins.. I have no idea what I'm going to do with those, because as you can see..

..they are already getting pretty big. And obviously a pumpkin plant has no place (room) in a window garden.. never mind 3 pumpkin plants.

Even though it's still not warm enough for anything else, especially at night, these guys are out already. Onions. Not grown from seeds, but I didn't eat them fast enough and they started sprouting roots and tops. They almost went in the garbage, but after researching online.. I planted them instead. Apparently, they can have flowers as well, which would be interesting.

 

The onion seeds I had from last year are doing okay though..

  

As are the poppies, which went almost nowhere last year. Then there are tomato plants (which took forever to have tomatoes last year) grown from tomatoes that I grew. That is the best.

As soon as the weather gets a little warmer at night.. those bean plants will go out into their larger boxes. Hopefully it won't be more than a week or two, as I'm starting to run out of window sills.
Only one pot of sunflowers. And just like the last two tries, they refuse to grow straight. I am still hopeful that with a little encouragement I can correct it. But I also hoped that before and they all ended up broken.

I kept everything inside longer than I probably should have last year. And I didn't get things into bigger pots as fast as I should have. This year I'm working harder to not make either of those mistakes.

Nasturtiums..

And lots of tomatoes. Which is good because, so far, the lettuce and cucumber seeds from last year have not sprouted at all. And I am starting to think that they won't. Which would be sad because they were my favorite things last year.