Summer is over

DSC01262, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

Sister's going back to school on Monday and I think I'm really going to miss the completely whack games that the girls played together. At the beginning of summer, I had big plans for all the time we were going to have at home. Cooking, baking, sewing up toys, doing paintings, setting up a family art space... but somehow all that ended up happening was naked Barbie parties and pet torture. Yeah, we went to the pool a couple times, made homemade popsicles once, went to the museum...but really, that was about it.

There seem to be a lot of parents out there relieved that their dear offspring will be heading back to school in the very near future (if they haven't already). But I'm just sorta bewildered by how very little we did this summer and feeling a bit disappointed that I didn't get around to teaching Sister to cook a few things like I meant, to teaching Bean how to embroider with yarn and a giant plastic needle on burlap, to even going to the zoo. Where the heck did all those long, empty weeks go?

Days without t.v....

DSC01235, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

...are spent doing EVERYTHING. I thought I was busy before? Sheesh!

In case you can't tell, that's our dining room table covered with quilts and all the sofa cushions and throw pillows piled up to make a fort. Then there's the scrap basket with fabric scraps all over the place. ALL the Legos out. ALL the cardboard blocks out. And yes, lots of happy, imaginative play going on there so I'm not complaining. Too much.

Something fun

It's hard to put together the chatty, light-hearted post I'd half-written in my head earlier today now. It's been a long damn day. Husband had to leave the house for something work-related at 7:00 am this morning. He returned for 45 minutes this afternoon--long enough for me to make a solo trip to the grocery store--and then was back out again til 9:30 tonight. When he got home, the goddamn dog woke both the baby and Bean up with his shrill little miniature Schnauzer yapping and I could have thrown him across the room. Sweet P has just, just fallen back to sleep after screaming for the last hour. Stupid frigging dog.

So anyways.

Remember how I wrote about real life, wanting to live a real life, something...what the hell did I say about real life? 'Cause all this doing real life stuff is tiring! Here's a list of real stuff I've been doing since my last post:

1. Repainting my downstairs bathroom. A room probably 10 square feet has taken me most of last week to (almost) finish painting during naptimes. Why am I doing this? Is a turquoise bathroom really worth it?

2. Dealing with Bean's mysterious, horrible spider bite. She woke up yesterday morning with a hugely swollen ankle and 2 tiny pus-y (um, how do you spell the adjective describing something containing pus...?) fang marks in the middle of it. She's on a course of antibiotics now because it was already getting infected. We're supposed to be looking out for necrosis. That's dying tissue that will have to be removed via surgery, for you spider bite neophytes.

3. Running naked in a thunderstorm with some college girlfriends and drinking entirely too much wine. Yes, this really happened! I'm too old to be drinking that much wine, though, and my liver hates me now.

4. Hmmm, can't think of much else just now besides changing a lot of diapers, nursing, and cleaning up a lot of poop and pee, of both the child and animal variety. Do any of you other moms feel like most of your day consists of wiping someone's butt?

5. Did I mention that Sweet P can crawl as of last week? It's a whole new world for both of us. She's interested in all kinds of things now--delicious bathroom trash, dog ears, the compost bucket, dust bunnies, electrical cords. I forgot about this dashing around to protect my infant from all things disgusting part of baby-mamahood, I must confess.

Off to bed now. It's late for this mama and both the big girls were demanding to do "something fun" tomorrow before they went to bed. And I get the sense that it better be something real, too. None of this "Let's just hang out!" stuff I've been trying to get by them lately.

Summer spruce up, plus bloggers visiting me!

I ought not to mind getting older. I tell myself this often, chastising myself that it's shallow to care. 'Cause I mean, I could be dead, right? Nevertheless, I find that I do care that every.freaking.year. the annual getting-ready-for-summer beauty routine gets harder. Or rather, it has less of an effect. And out of frustration about my mousey self, I end up doing idiotic things like dyeing my hair lurid purpley-red, as if I don't remember that a red that bright just doesn't go so well with the jeans and spit-up encrusted t-shirts I might manage to pull on late in the morning. With my old, cute, black crepe flapper dresses, yes, but with mommy gear...uh, no. Sigh.

Nevertheless, I doggedly kept a bikini wax appointment today, more to avoid scaring the passel of children who will be attending this year's family beach trip than in the hopes that anyone might look twice at me in a bikini. I mean, tankini. I mean, skirted tankini. (Do they still make flapper bathing suits? I would so wear one at this point!) I bought some bronzer and some mineral make-up stuff that I actually think does make my complexion look better in some subtle way. And I painted my toe nails pink.

That about does it for my summer sprucing up this year. That's all I have time for, and that's all I have the heart to try.

On a brighter note, I'm pretty damn excited that tomorrow night I have two bloggers coming over to my house to hang out--woo-hoo! I met Beth from Blind as a Bat last year when she was in Raleigh visiting her daughter, and she was just as friendly and funny in real life as she is on her blog. Joan from Southern Suburbia I've never met, despite the fact that she lives only about an hour away from me. Small confession here: I kinda had her in mind when I painted my toenails tonight, having gotten an inkling how she is about her own toes.

I'm only slightly embarrassed to say that I'm serving them take-out pizza for dinner, feeling like a big salad, homemade brownies, and Kat's Bourbon Slush (scroll down to the end of the post) ought to make them feel welcome and feted, regardless. I'll let y'all know how it goes, okay?

Mummified Barbie with precious oil

Mummified Barbie with precious oil, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

What?! Your kids don't anoint Barbies with fragrant oils and mummify them in toilet paper when it's summertime?

P.S. Lest y'all think I'm the most permissive of mamas, letting my girls play around with my perfume collection, know that the bottled Gap stink pictured here is a yard sale find that Sister picked up this weekend. Perfume makes my nose hurt. (All mummification around here happens on the porch.)

It's starting again

Sister's return to school as a fourth grader is imminent now. Suddenly the summer is over and there's a lot to do to get ready for the school grind to begin again. I need to take Sister shopping for some new clothes--for jeans specifically which she has always spurned before as too uncomfortable but which now she's dying to wear. Well, that and a suit on her first day of school. I'm afraid I've been letting my dear child watch a bit too much "What Not to Wear" with me lately. A suit, she says!

But it is funny how her tastes are starting to change. She and her friends spent all last year spurning all things "girly-girl," as they phrased it. This included anything pink or Bratz, Barbie, or unicorn-related. This year, suddenly pink is o.k., and even desirable. She chose a pink parka for herself out of a catalog, along with a pastel pink shirt with floral trim and a pink-flowered skirt to match. She wants to grow her hair out long again and also chose a pink backpack this year--though it is in fact hot pink with black polka dot trim and nothing too sweet.

Still, I'm interested to see where this might be heading this year.

Real summer

I managed a little bit of outside time yesterday--once to ask the neighbor's gardener what she'd charge to weed all the crabgrass out of our big front bed (an affordable rate! and she can do it this week!)--and a bit of time spent potting up my new plants on the patio, taking lots and lots of breaks from the heat.

It is brutally hot this week in NC. The kind of hot where when you walk out the door, the temperature and the humidity hit you in the face like a wet wall. I waited til 7:30 in the evening to walk the dog around the block, and just that little bit of exertion walking very, very slowly had me dripping with sweat all over. Even my exposed calves were sweating, not to mention the thigh sweat and boob sweat--yuck.

I'm working on some sewing projects with the girls today and staying the hell indoors.

Interlude

All is well on the hair front now for those of you who read about my dyeing mishap on Father's Day. Suburban Gorgon's advice to tone down the neon orange with ash brown worked beautifully--after 2 applications, that is. It's rather a darkish auburn now. It's a good thing I have such short hair because while it's a bit strawlike now after so much mistreatment, all the damage will be cut off with a few trims within the next couple months. In the meantime, there's beeswax-based pomade.

Anyways.

Big decision today--whether to take the girls swimming or to the Museum of Natural Science. Probably the museum since it's looking like the sky's going to open up any minute here...