Random updates

1. My special friend called me at work yesterday.  I'd been dreading this phone call.  He was all, I haven't used your pan yet, to which I was like, hallelujah, it's still in tact, then, and then he was like, can I put it on the stove? and I was all, NOOOOOOOOOO!  And then he was like, I have a column I'm working on, and something about getting blood drawn and wanting a cute nurse next time.

Creepy.  Although he didn't mention cooking vegetables in my double boiler, so, you know.  That was a plus.

2. Monday was "Bat Shit Crazy Day" at the office.  Apparently.  We had someone come unglued because her dog didn't win anything in the paper's pet photo contest and accused us of rigging it.  I was like, thanks for calling into question my personal integrity, not to mention that of my friends here, but actually what I said was: Nothing.  I let Stacey deal with her.  I had better things to do than try to make the senseless see sense.  Plus the phone rang.  The universe loves me.  Only not enough to keep other crazy people from coming in / calling / whatnots.  On the upside... well, there really isn't an upside to this story.  Oops.

P.S. If you want your dog to win a photo contest, make sure it's actually a good photo.  BURN!  Huh.  Guess I'm not over this yet...

3. This week I've volunteered to work at the elementary school book fair, starting today.  I usually take three time slots the first week because not everyone has time to help.  Johanna started counting her money yesterday and asked if she could have a buck for every chore she preformed.  This lead to her "cleaning" her bedroom, i.e. throwing all the crap into her closet and shutting the door.  Except for her Legos, which is what really needs to be cleaned up because ouch, it hurts to walk across her floor.  After surveying the bulging closet, I asked her to please clean the area by her bookcase too and left her to her own devices.  This is what she showed me when I came back in her room to check:

Princess Abby and King Eric.  We're totally about
phonetics in this household.

We all know she's getting books anyway, right?  And that she'll spend nary a cent of her own?  Ah, books.  I get that excitement.

Anyway, I've got the lunch shift, so that should be interesting.  And loud.

4. Johanna had another nightmare last night, or maybe this morning.  It was 4:45 when she came running down the hall to get me.  So I took her back to bed and just crawled in because wow, 4:45.  She wasn't dreaming of war this time... just about zombies serving cookies and talking about brains.  So that was a nice change of pace.

She snuggled into me and fell back to sleep.  That part was sort of nice because she's such a busy kid that she barely sits down.  I miss the snuggling.

5. Johanna: Mom, there are two books at the library that totally humiliate dogs.  One is about a ghost dog and one is about a dog with a cake on his head.  Is that humiliating to dogs?
Me: Yes, I suppose it is.  Do you know "humiliate" means?  Really, really embarrassing.
Johanna: Oh.  I thought it just meant embarrassing.
Me: [crickets]

6. According to my calendar, my vanilla project should be complete next Thursday.  I sort of forget to shake the bottle more than... once a week... but anyway, I was thinking, what's to stop a person from just chucking some vanilla beans into a bottle of vodka and calling it a day?  Do you need to be all fancy, really?  Not that I'll get rid of my cute little bottle.  I'm just thinking out loud here, folks.

7. Cranky Steve brought me a box of apples yesterday.  Gravensteins and galas.  So apparently I need to start baking.