I keep going to meetings and hearing unoriginal, yet totally true, adages. The latest was that if you organize your desk first, and then your day, your whole life will follow. I think this is a great idea that I will try for about 10 minutes. So I organized my desk. In fact, my desk is organized RIGHT NOW. Granted, I had to leave work right after the organizing was done in order not to disorganize it. And I took my disorganization with me to the tire place. I am so disorganized that I had to pay for my snow tire change over not with my debit card but with a post it with my debit card number scrawled on it. Because I left my purse at home today. But I am sure these problems will stop now that my desk is clean.

Ready, Aim...

On Sunday morning I shot to kill. This is past of a progression which began with walks in the woods with my dad while he toted a rifle during deer season. When I met Bill I started shooting at clay pigeons with some regularity (and missing). Then I took hunter's safety and got a license. During the past two falls, I sat in a duck blind, holding a loaded shotgun. And on Sunday I aimed and fired. Except I didn't exactly aim. And I missed. I'm not sure I missed because I am a terrible shot, or because I didn't really want to.

Hunting is a loaded topic. I could say any number of things about it. I could try and write about how I used to be a vegetarian. I could expand upon my earlier post on local food, hormones, and organic eating. I could share Bill's duck recipes. But none of that really matters if you are against hunting, and I certainly understand why people feel that way, having once shared the opinion that hunting is wrong.

But no, instead I will just say that I hate getting up early in the morning, I hate being cold, and I don't really care if I bring home dinner. What I love is sitting in silence with my husband in the woods, or on the water, in a blind, in a boat. I love the way the silence ends after dawn has passed and we talk about things we don't talk about anywhere else. I love the way he plans these trips together, bringing me a chair, packing a snack, lending me the warmest socks. I love the way he is so happy to have me with him, that he doesn't go hunting to be alone, or to have MAN TIME, or to get a break from me, or any of the sad reasons so many women I know give for being hunting widows. (I love that it is not football.) I love that he has something he does that brings him joy, and that he loves to share it with me.

And I will go again, maybe not this fall, but next. I may even shoot again, but I doubt I will aim. It's a little bit nerves, a little bit bad eye sight, a little bit disinterest, and a little bit moral ambiguity. But I am glad to be there.

Laugh Riot

Casualties of the Day

Seven pounds of potatoes -mashed
Three pounds of yams -glazed
Two turkeys - one drown in brine the other lowered into boiling oil (total of 32 lbs)
One sock - eventually found
One lip - bloodied and fat, belonging to Bebe Lulu

Anti-Promiscuity Cookies

Bill returned from Alaska with a plan. He thinks it likely that the chemicals and hormones and shit in today's foods cause the girls to have puberty earlier than in olden days. He's not alone in this theory, but he has managed to take it one level farther. He thinks that those hormones might also make her slutty, so he's added his new plan to the exisiting fatherly goal espoused by Chris Rock: just keep her off the pole.

That's why he came home with a bag of organic foods yesterday, including the wheat, dairy and soy free arrowroot biscuits he calls anti-promiscuity cookies.

The Ten Things First

Yesterday I was a meeting of other local fundraisers. We all went around the table and shared news, ideas, plans. One my colleagues suggested the completely unoriginal but incredibly true idea that if you do the 10 most important but avoided things on your list before you do ANYTHING else you will see an incredible impact on your bottom line, which in our business is your fundraising goal for the year. I ventured that if I actually wrote those things down it would have an incredible impact on my need for a vacation.

I can't get into what my ten work things would be, but I can tell you what my ten home things would be (I had to exclude things that require more than $100 to do.)

1. Clean out my closet - keep, mend or clean, throw away, give away
2. Decide which books to sell on half.com and actually like, you know, list them
3. Organize the storage room I never got to on bebe's last surgery day because her nap lasted 30 minutes
4. Come up with six more things that are not organize six other rooms, which is truly what I need to do but is incredibly boring.

Shake Your Birdie

Bill has danced with me once. Ever. It was at our wedding, of course. By the time he had loosened up enough to dance a second time we were back at the bed and breakfast, sleeping. Every once in a while he apologizes for this, but his apologies should not be misconstrued as an offer to make it up to me.

Which is why about six months ago he apologized slightly differently, and in advance. Because he realizes that whenever Bebe Lulu wants to dance with him, he will say yes.

So we do a lot of dancing around here lately. Luckily Bebe is not afraid to go solo once in a while, singing with her opera face and spinning through the kitchen or bobbing across the couch. If you seem too relaxed during the good song that's playing she'll run over and say "UP. UP. DANCE!" And you had better.

Which explains why the other night all three Stahls were in the living room, each hand clenching a crayon (a key prop) and shake shake shaking while Bebe yelled "Shake your birdie!"

Return to Sender

The sound you heard at 6:17 this evening was my head exploding.

My back is much worse than it was even 24 hours ago and my appointment with the chiropractor is still more than 24 hours away. The pain began as mid back muscles spasms, but now includes searing neck stabs, tingling legs and general stiffness. At one point today I realized I could be mistaken for the hunchback of Notre Dame in profile. The level of irritation at this, when combined with the arrival of three poorly fitting/poorly made dresses I order more than a week ago and with Bebe Lulu's evening opera performance/hunger strike were enough to send me over the edge. But when we found out we couldn't get take out from Stein's for dinner? The end.

I can get over all the rest, but I am holding a grudge over the clothing. There's truly no place for me to shop here. We don't have a real g*ap, just an outlet where size is meaningless from one pair of jeans to the next. Another popular store seems to hide the cute well-made clothes when I come in. Everyone else seems to get lucky there...I find shit. I am too old, too busty, and too bellied for 3/4 of the stores in the mall and I don't like hippie clothes or mom jeans or appliqued sweaters enough for the other 1/4. So basically I am left with TJ Maxx and no time to properly browse the racks there. So I've been ordering clothes. Any favorite sites to direct me to?

It will probably be another week before I can move enough to try on clothes anyway, so slow shipping is not a problem. If only I could accesrize like Bebe Lulu.

Space

I've been doing a little reclamation over the last week. More than two years ago I converted one of our five upstairs bedrooms into an office/craft room/female guest guest room. And slowly the room has morphed into a hellish pit of clutter and crap. I preparation for Thanksgiving, I decided to turn it around so the mothers can have a nice room again and we can have a place to keep the printer and all our paperwork. Since the room has one of the four closets in our house, the purchase of some plastic bins has realy helped the situation.

Beyond the practical uses of the room, it has a bigger purpose- it is the one room in our house that is all mine. I can decorate it how I want, arrange it how I want and be in it ALONE if I want. Bill and I each have a room like that. Even if I hardly ever use it, the fact that it is there is what matters the most.

The next step in Thanksgiving guest prep is to move all our crap (outgrown baby items, out of season clothes, etc etc) from one upstairs bedroom to another, so we can organize the crap and free up a nicer room for the second mother to arrive (the first gets my room).

Alas, I have been derailed by back spasms.

There's probably no sound as piercing to me as Bebe Lulu's blood curdling screams when she's pissed off. Right now she's in her crib in her room calling me, then Daddy, then me again. I'm ignoring her because I am a cruel and heartless mother. Well, I suppose that's what she thinks. Really, I just know she needs a nap that's not chemically induced-she has one of those earier today.

Bebe Lulu had her third surgery in 3 months this morning: 1. removal of thyroglossal duct cyst 2. removal of paper from nose 3. repair of infected incision from #1. Each visit to the OR has gotten easier, or I've gotten smarter. For instance we've gone from wagon ride to OR from prep room, to wagon pulled behind carry, to ride on stretcher bed with mom. This last was definitely easier. We've graduating from not even letter versed dose with in five yards, to out right refusal of versed, to giving versed to monkey before slurping it down. Again, why didn't we think of that before?

The screaming has stopped. I pray for a nap long enough for me to check emails for work, read various blogs, throw clothes in the drier, clean up dishes, sweep my office/craft room, reorganize storage room. In other words, a miracle.

Resurrecting the blog

I've been thinking for a few weeks about a return to blogging, now that I have the new macbook (swoon) and the high-speed internet at home. But I couldn't get any excitement going over my old blog, Whose Mama Next, because it felt all baby focused and Bebe Lulu is no longer a baby, despite this nickname. It wasn't til this morning that it dawned on me to start a new blog that's less about her and more about me.