the daily grind: and hungry to boot

You know how you have days where you hit late, late afternoon and you're suddenly so famished you're sure you're wasting away to nothing. You think as hard as you can, but can only come up with a handful of nuts and a glass of milk for your day's nourishment? (No wonder you're STARVING!) Friday was not that day. And Friday makes the days I lose track of time and forget to eat okay. For the record I'm pretty sure it wasn't really all my fault. I started out well - yogurt with a little bit of Grape Nuts sprinkled on top, breakfast of champions. Then I got down to feeding the boys and here we come to accomplice #1. Grey has been begging for Toaster Strudel. (because he saw a commercial for some and can't get them out of his head, along with the sham-wow, the snuggie, some black-head extractor and the most horrible carry-all purse that he is sure will solve all my problems. I digress.) Anyway the begging has been going for at least a month and I finally caved. Too bad the real thing wasn't quite as delicious as what he had hoped. All three boys left at least half of their tasty toaster treats on their plates. Too bad for me really, because I ended up eating most of what was left over. Not so bad, actually.

Inexplicably I was hungry again around lunchtime. I was getting ready to head out to the horses for a ride, I'd need my strength, folks. Frozen Burritos to the rescue. Mmm. Such a very guilty pleasure. (I think I might need one now. . .) And I'm quite willing to take full responsibility for that one. Never met a burrito I didn't like. Surely, you say, you stopped the madness there. But, no. That wasn't all.

After school I rounded up the boys, my lovely niece and her lovely girls and we all headed to the mall to meet another lovely niece and do a little shoe shopping for the boys. (Max informed me the day before that he "now [had] a new hole in the side of [his] shoe". New hole? I asked. Then he showed me how he could take the middle of the sole out through a hole in the bottom of his shoe! He was so proud of it, and I was so horrified. a.) How many people has shown THAT trick to? b.) How long has that been there?! c.) I can't believe we haven't seen child protective services, or at least had new shoes dropped off anonymously on the porch.) ANYWAY, as we pulled up to the mall I said something to the effect of thinking one of those soft mall pretzels sounded good all of the sudden. Enter accomplice #2. Lovely niece number one says, "Ooo, yeah. Have you ever had the little pretzel bites?" No, I hadn't. But let me tell you, I have now. I was feeling very empty bellied after the shoe store and numerous terrifying trips up and down the escalators with five little children - most of which who refused to hold anyone's hands. They were de-li-cous. (The pretzel bites, that is.) soft. warm. all buttery. and salty. Yummy.

As we loaded back into the car to head to our next shopping destination I realized WHY we were hungry and the kids were so whiny. It was basically seven o'clock and we hadn't really fed them or ourselves yet. So we hurried through some equally delicious jeans shopping and ordered some pizzas to pick up on the way home. Yeah, pizza would top off the day nicely. Luckily, lovely niece number two had the sense to insist on picking up salad 'stuff' (along with lovely nieces three and four) on the way back.

Not so luckily, ten minutes from home, warm pizza boxes on niece number one's lap, what to our wondering eyes should appear but accomplice #3 - a DANCING TAGALONG. You heard me. An enormous dancing cookie motioning mid-macarena to the girl scout-mothers sitting behind a table in the stripmall. (At whom we waved a twenty and asked "how much can I get for this?. . . wait, we've got more!") First off, a note to all you girl scouts:

For the two weeks or so I spent in girl scouts, we went door to door to sell our cookies, dressed in ridiculous little brownie outfits. (Wonder why I only lasted two weeks. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the stupid 'sand-art' bird we made at one of the three meeting I ever attended. It was always about the cookies. And starting fires. Boy Scouts make fires, thought the girls would too. No such luck. Filled up a sprite bottle with different colored sand, glued on a feather and googly eyes. I was out of there before the glue dried.) Where are all the Brownies now? All we see are your mothers. You don't realize what you're missing by NOT knocking on my door. Seriously, I am a veritable gold mine. No one has enough Samoas or Tagalongs to fill my freezer. Let me order them from you, little girls. If we're not home, leave us A CARD. You don't have to do the Macarena on the street corner (although, that was fairly impressive in itself.), or sit at a table outside a grocery store selling a measly few boxes at a time. Come. Sell in bulk. Go home happy.
So, long story short, the endless carb fest ended with BBQ Chicken pizza, refreshing salad, and too, too many scrumptious Girl Scout Cookies. . . which are now gone. We are now desperately seeking the dancing tagalong once more. Hope you stocked up, girlies.

Here's what I want my days off to be like:
8am- asleep.
9am- still sleeping
10am- yep, you guessed it. Asleep. Although it's a good time to be arriving at consciousness.
11am-feeding the humans and animals, in my pajamas.
12am-possibly time to get clean and dressed, unless it's time for a nap. Maybe make sure the little ones are clean and dressed too.
You get the picture.
This week is too too too busy. Why does school starting signal an end to all free time I didn't know I had? Do we really have to have fifty soccer practices the same instant we start being homework-hounds? Does PTA have a number of required hours to fill? Let's ease in to this back-to-school thing here. Baby steps.
On top of that craziness, apparently Tyler was determined to get unpacked-right-now and all my plans of crawling back into bed after I got the school send-off-thingy taken care of were out the window. I do not have the time to fully explain the contrast in the way we 'unpack' things and seriously must return to this subject in a few days. . .when I am closer to sane. Let's just say that I might have, well let's say 'hidden', in the closet folding clothes of all things to escape all the "what do you want to do with this?"-ing.