You know this blog is dead, right?

I mean, it's a good read and all, but let's be real: I haven't posted here in almost two years.

If you want the most current dish on poop, idiots and why House makes me tingly please head on over to:

Mean Teacher's Ordinary World

Ta!

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

The New Guy came home from the beach having mastered the ability to crawl. It was fine in the spankin' new rental house up in Chincoteague, which featured very little in the way of Junebug corpses and cat poo crumbs swept into adult-inaccessible crevices. Needless to say, I've been doing nothing but spring-clean and fish nasty stuff out from between four tiny, gnashing teeth since we got back.

The Siberian husky, who has always been a terrible prima donna, has taken our vacation very badly (yes, this is the first time the dogs have been left to their own devices for anything longer than a school day. It may be difficult for normal people to wrap their brains around the extent to which we spoil these creatures. Put it this way: my household consists of me and eight toddlers of varying states of furriness.)

Anyhow, the husky will now come a-runnin' the instant any human picks up a piece of human food, and she will hover as closely as possible to that human until she sees an opportunity to dive in and secure the food for herself. It's annoying when she tries it on us adults, it's positively infuriating when she does it to the kids.

Booger barely eats as it is, and is prone to nibbling, then wandering away, which now results in 99.3% of his meal being hoovered up by the dog the second his back is turned. Meanwhile, the New Guy is much fonder of his feed, but has a tendency to drop things and be unable to pick them back up before they are pounced upon and consumed. Opposable thumbs or no, in a dexterity competition between a seven month old child and a seven year old dog, the dog has some distinct advantages.

So we shoot the dog with the water bottle and holler at her and hurl her outside, and her response to that is to dig a hole under the fence and run away. That's a pain in and of itself, but what's worse is that a couple of times she's taken the great Dane with her. The Dane is in possession of many gifts and charms but street savvy would not be one of them, and so losing her under the fence is very nerve-wracking.

I don't know what we're going to do about any of that.

One thing I certainly learned during the first year of Booger's life is: a comfort zone is that place you almost find just before everything in the household changes completely. You've got the crawling drill down, they learn how to walk. You've got the great Dane trained to behave, the husband goes out and buys a thirty pound cat that engages said dog in noisy, furniture-smashing scrums every night about five minutes after the kids have finally gone to sleep.

But on the plus side, the New Guy is sitting up and playing with toys, and Booger has gained in leaps and bounds in talking ability and can now tell stories, have proper conversations, and, sometimes, even be reasoned with. Hell, even Mr. Mean Teacher has finally gotten a few things through his thick skull lately.

So change ain't necessarily all bad. Which is good, 'cause that's one aspect of life around here I'm pretty damn sure ain't gonna change.

I'm sorry, it just needed saying...

During a phone conversation with my mother:

Mom: ... and your father tasted one wine and I tasted two, but it was really too hot to drink wine...

Booger: Mommy! Can I have Cocoa Pebbles?

MT: Just a sec, Mom. No, Booger, not for dinner. I'll get you dinner in a minute. [to Mom:] Sorry 'bout that. Somebody's getting hungry.

Mom: That's okay...

Booger: Mommy! I want some Cocoa Pebbles!

MT: Dangitall, Booger, not now.

Mom: What is he asking for?

MT: Cocoa Pebbles.

Mom: Why on Earth is he asking for Cocoa Pebbles? Why would you even have Cocoa Pebbles in your house?

MT: Because as a child I was deprived horribly of sugared cereal and in direct reaction to that deprivation I have stocked my house with Cocoa Pebbles.

Mom: ...

MT: And Pop Tarts.

******

Meanwhile, we are, as I'm typing, watching Hellboy on FX (somebody help me out, I totally am not getting this movie). Anyhow, somebody gets killed, and then somebody fires up a cigar, and Booger shouts, "That's bad! They're being bad!"

"What's bad, Boog, the smoking or the killing?"

"The smoking! That's so bad!"

Looks like we made it...

... or: notes from a small island.

We have returned from vacation and everyone has survived, although the animals avenged our cruel desertion by tearing an entire bale of Charmin from Costco into teeny tiny pieces, and it doesn't look like you folks out in the blogosphere behaved much better. Anyhow, it was a fantastic time and I know you're drooling for details, and I'm happy to oblige, but I only have so long before the hubster comes home for dinner and I have to figure out how to cook a flounder of dubious freshness. So here's the important stuff.

At first we weren't sure about transportation. Do we take the Matrix. Do we take the Solara convertible? Do we take both? Do we take both and the boat? Do we take the Matrix and the boat? Do we not take the boat?

Mr. Mean Teacher doesn't have a lot of patience for small, whiny, crying children and can be a real pill himself on long drives. And I indulge in a loathing for that boat that most women reserve for their husband's mistress. So my vote was two cars, no boat.

So we took the Matrix and the boat.

The drive up was eight and a half hours. All three of my boys were angels for eight and pretty testy for the last thirty minutes, which, all things considered, was phenomenal. And I learned how to drive with a boat trailer on my ass end, which wasn't as awful as I had been secretly hoping.

Chincoteague Island, Virginia, which is where we were, is FANTASTIC. Go now. Seriously. Our rental was brand-new and FANTASTIC. The stores are adorable and the prices are appallingly reasonable (board shorts: $10.00, two single-serves and a sundae and a lemonade at Mr. Whippy: $7.50, leather bag of silly polished rocks: $3.99. Hell, even gas was 20 cents cheaper per gallon than at home). The place is covered in little gingerbreaded victorian houses, and the famous wild ponies are on the next island over.

Mr. Mean Teacher caught endless fish, and thus was the happiest man alive. Booger got to play with the shockingly badly-behaved children of our friends with whom we were sharing the house and had a wonderful time. He and I were in agreement that the beach would be perfect if they just got rid of all that goddamned sand. There were pony rides and endless ice-cream runs and the rental of a very silly scooter.

By Tuesday morning I was even willing to admit that bringing the stupid boat wasn't such a horrible idea, since it had been really easy to get ramp access and Mr. Mean Teacher had been fishing up a storm. That, of course, was when we lost The Part.

See, if you use your boat in the ocean, apparently it is advisable to take it apart and rinse it off real good afterward. It is not, however, advisable to do this in the dark. Over sand. And so we had my husband spending an entire morning crawling around in the sand, swearing up and down that if that part was not located, he was GOING HOME. Meanwhile, I swung over to the chamber of commerce, made a few phone calls, drove to Maryland and got a replacement Part for $4.80 (plus the roughly $6 I had to spend on gas -- but the aggravation? Fucking priceless.) And that was how I rescued my summer vacation.

But that was the only incident of note, and was survived in the end with very little horribleness on anyone's part. Nobody got sick. Nobody got hurt.

Oh, the food did suck. Go to Chincoteague, but bring a cooler full of your own grub.

Flounder calls. More later.

Wish you were here...

Are we there yet?

The New Guy has a fever, the husband has the trots, and Booger can't stop coughing. We'll be off at the crack of dawn to wider horizons. Don't bother trying to rob my house, if we had anything worth fencing I would've sold it already. Besides, I can't be held responsible for what my crazy Ukrainian neighbor would do to you if you tried.

I'll report back when opportunity arises. There's nothing like taking the male members of my family out of their comfort zone for yielding amusing anecdotes.

I big pink puffy heart my life...

Everyone in this family (with exception of self) has been suffering from some sort of dread Affliction (asthma, rash, diarrhea, constipation, cold, and whatever the hell the New Guy's been hollering about, Lord knows he won't bother to explain himself properly) since last Wednesday. Sleeping through the night has been off the menu the entire time.

Meanwhile, we leave for the beach on Friday, and there are (I counted) exactly EIGHT MILLION SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY-EIGHT THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO things that need to be done by me and (obviously) me alone before we go.

You know how this will play out, don't you? We'll finally get to the beach, get through the first day or two of settling in and working the kinks out of vacationing with this expanded family unit, and Mean Teacher will hunker down to enjoy her first vacation trip in (so not kidding here) YEARS and my immune system will completely collapse and I will puke or be delirious with fever for three days straight.

(Note to self: pack Pepto, the Ibuprofens they gave you at the hospital, and a bunch of decent books.)