Dear Kid,

This morning I woke up waaaay before my alarm thought I needed to.

My typical MO (modus operandi) when I wake up early is to do the only rational thing and close my eyes and go back to sleep. This particular morning, however, my eyes and my brain refused to cooperate with the going-back-to-sleep plan.

Did you know that the plural of modus operandi is modi operandi? Of course you did.

Don’t ask why; I have no idea. It’s not like I went to bed early last night. But there I was: awake. Not bleary eyed where-is-my-coffee awake, but really awake. Brain functioning awake.

While going back to sleep would have been the better option, there is something delicious about really awake before you have to get up and start the day.

Things I thought about while lying in bed wide awake:

This week’s menu. Here’s what I thought: we should have one. (I never actually got around to creating it.)

Today’s blog. Here’s what I thought: I should write one.

My comforter: Here’s what I thought: I love snuggling here knowing I don’t have to get up for an hour or so.

House cleaning. Here’s what I thought: Someone should do that.

Dreams. Here’s what I thought: I can’t remember what I dreamed about.

Clothes. Here’s what I thought: Maybe I should decide what to wear today.

Clocks. Here’s what I thought: Why the heck am I awake?

Sleep. Here’s what I thought: I should probably try to get some.

Reality: Here’s what I thought: Yark! My alarm is set to go off in 10 minutes!

Breakfast: Here’s what I thought: Yum!

Clock. Here’s what I thought: How did it get to be time to leave for work already?

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Well, the To Do is still staring me in the face and the elves haven’t shown up to help get any of the work done. One of these days I am going to find good, hardworking, loyal elves and I will have a clean house and finished tasks. Until then, I have a house and unfinished tasks.

Dad and I spent part of this morning cleaning in the kitchen. Yesterday, he and I went to a home remodeling show where we saw lots of things we like and pretty much nothing we can afford. Shocker, I know. We decided cleaning the kitchen would be an excellent place to start. We managed to get the center island clean and the dishes in the sink dealt with before we lost steam and interest.

The good news is that we lost steam and interest at about the same time so neither of us is annoyed with the other about not cleaning any more.

The bad news is that we lost steam and interest at about the same time so neither of us is still cleaning even though there is a great deal more to do.

Sigh.

I’m giving away a giant hug to anyone who can teach me how to make perfect medium boiled eggs—every time. I keep having the problem of the white sticking to the shell so that I end up with only half an egg. Life is tough.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Dad and I went to the crafts fair at the high school yesterday. As always, it was mobbed and various school bands and orchestras played in the background. (Stick with me, you’re going to like this one.)

We wandered around looking at various crafts, purchasing a few pieces of jewelry, sampling various homemade yummies, and basically having a good time.

My friend Ann was there selling chocolate covered treats (hi Ann!).

Near the end of our wanderings, we rounded a corner and I said, “Oh, my.”

The two ladies sitting at the table burst into laughter. “That’s the best response we’ve had all day,” one of them told me through her giggles. It must have been my tone of voice. Or possibly the reaction they’d gotten from other visitors.

The thing is, they were selling spiders.

Yep, spiders.

And you know how I feel about arachnids.

But these were glittery spiders and they came with a story (an 1800s German folk tale to be precise). A little bling and a good story go a long way in my book.

I’ve lifted the pix from their website (visit it here) because I took a great shot of their table that came out as nothing but blur. (We’ve discussed how not-good I am at photography. Where’s Beth when you need her?)

Here are the photos:

And here is the story (which makes the spiders much, much better):

Once upon a time (because all the best stories start that way), a mother was busy cleaning her home for Christmas. The spiders (not being stupid) skedaddled (not a German word) out of the way of her broom and up to the attic to hide. Apparently, the mother wasn’t too concerned about the cleanliness of the attic. Truth be told, neither am I.

When the house was quite, the spiders slowly crept downstairs to see the beautiful tree. (Ooooh, ahhh.) Being excited and being spiders, they scurried up the trunk of the tree and out each of the branches.

This suggests that there were more than the usual number of spiders but since this is a fairy tale we shall overlook the mother’s infestation and move on.

The spiders were filled with happiness at being in the tree and it leaked out in the form of spider webs. The spiders spun and danced through the night, leaving their webs everywhere.

At his appointed time, Santa showed up with gifts for the children. (Can anyone explain how he manages to scoot up and down chimneys without getting soot anywhere? Dad can’t even come in from outside without tracking mud into the house.)

When Santa saw the tree covered in spider webs, he smiled at the happiness of the spiders. Apparently, he was a fan of the eight-legged. But he knew that the mother would be upset if she saw her beautiful tree covered with dusty webs (not sure how they got dusty so quickly, but in this story, they did). So, being Santa and therefore being magic, he turned the webs into silver and gold.

The tree sparkled and shined and was even more beautiful than before (well, duh–if you had magic silver and gold all over you, you’d sparkle and shine too).

And that’s why we have tinsel on our trees and why every Christmas tree should have a Christmas spider in its branches.

I told you it was a good story.

Love, Mom 

Dear Kid,

Tomorrow is a big day. It’s Clean Your Refrigerator Day and America Recycles Day.

One would hope there’s not too much recycling of the things you manage to clean out of your refrigerator.

I don’t know if we’ll get around to celebrating Clean Your Refrigerator Day. The frig needs it, that’s for sure. It’s been sending out mysterious sticky spots as invitations, but so far nothing seems to have developed limbs, so I’m guessing we can put it off a week or two if we have to. On the other hand, given everything we went through to get the darn thing, you’d think we might clean it up occasionally.

As far as recycling goes, I can’t decide if I think having a Day dedicated is good or not. On the one hand anything that promotes recycling is Good. On the other hand, needing a Day for something we should be doing all the time is frustrating.

I don’t think we have a Day dedicated to garbage; as a society, we’re pretty good at throwing things away, so we don’t need a capital “D” Day to remember to do it.

Not so much with recycling.

Which is too bad.

So tell everyone to take their cans and paper and cardboard and other recyclables and keep them out of a landfill.

At least for one day.

Who knows? It might start a habit.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

It’s that time of year again.

The time of year when you go to work when it’s dark and come home when it’s dark. The time of year when bears and people would really rather think about hibernation.

The time of year when people worry about whether coffee tastes good out of red cups rather than worrying about the important things like war, famine, and whether it’s legal to play fantasy football.

It’s a list-making time of year. (OK, for me, it is always a list-making time of year, but right now it seems everyone is making lists. Some are even checking them twice.)

We’re making lists about who will do what chore when they come home from college. We’re making lists about menus and ingredients and who will eat what and do not get Aunt Martha started about her cataracts.

We’re making lists about emails to send and cards to write and decorations to purchase. We’re making lists about what we need to take when we travel and what time we absolutely, positively MUST leave the house in order to avoid traffic and make our connection. We’re making lists about getting the cleaning done and the baking done and do not talk about politics with Aunt Martha no matter what.

We’re making lists of what to be thankful for and what chapters to study and what homework is due. We’re making lists of what can be accomplished before the end of the year and what will have to wait until 2016. We’re making lists of home repairs and hoping the weather will read the list and not make things difficult.

We’re making lists of what’s on sale when and whether we can live without a muffin pan that lets you bake 48 mini muffins at once. We’re making lists of which doctor appointments have been scheduled and whether we can still get in for a teeth cleaning during winter break.

We make our lists, knowing that some of the things will get done and some will almost get done and some will not get done despite our best efforts. But we do what we can and decide to celebrate being with the people we love rather than fretting about whether we have enough decorations. (We still hope no one brings up the presidential debates with Aunt Martha.)

And for the record, coffee tastes the same no matter what color cup you drink from. Ditto for the design on the cup. To all those who are fretting about it, get over yourselves.

Love, Mom