Hump Day Short: February Break Boy Quotes

“You can’t judge a woman on her looks.” Liam after watching the Berenstain Bears Halloween episode: “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” Apparently the message stuck.

It’s been a week of Liam hovering three inches from my hip if I leave a room. “I can’t be by myself. Remember my bad dream? Skeletons…” Berenstain Bears Halloween episode.

“Look, Mom!” Liam is playing tonalization from piano lessons. On his toes. (We are in Vermont with no piano.)

“I just love being on vocation!” That’s just so darn cute none of us can tell Liam that it’s really “vacation.”

“Cool, we have the roll out bed!” At age 8, Will is not heavy enough to feel every spring and rod in the pull-out sofa.

“I never want to get off my skis!” Liam, after his first-ever ski lesson.

“Did you see me come straight down that hill?” Will, after his first-ever ski lesson, exiting the chair lift and zipping down the hill, leaving me at the top. He’s become one of those little guys on the slopes.

“I think I really hurt my knee…” Bill stated after the 45-second-long wipe out on the entrance to the bunny-hill chair lift – a scene leaving me laughing so hard I couldn’t stand up straight. After all, I am married to alpine skier, Bill Malcolm, who regularly picks me up off the sides of mountains.

Happy Hump Day…

Hump Day Short: Eat Your Frog

Love these Mark Twain quotes:

“If you eat a frog first thing in the morning, the rest of your day will be wonderful.”

“If you have to eat a frog, don’t look at it for too long.”

At 6 a.m., the laundry maven went down to the laundry room; stumbled over the dirty clothes; sorted those into organized laundry piles; and put a load of laundry on.

That frog didn't taste too bad!

Happy Hump Day…

Hump Day Short: My Hair According to Will

Resident cartoonist Will recently gave me his take on my curly chemo hair.

Will: “Mom, I really like your curly hair.”

My ego buds.

Will: “It’s so much easier to draw than your other hair.”

My ego… silly old ego.

Happy Hump Day…

Taming an Elephant

I’m traveling through my journals looking for a story to polish and post today. That’s my usual pattern.

It’s not working. I’m distracted.

Until 4 a.m. this morning, I was trying to tame an elephant so we could keep it as a family pet. It understood my words. I got it to sit back on its rear legs with the bribe of a run through the sprinkler if it did what I asked. It was going well until Bill pissed it off. Then it turned into a cartoon elephant, flipped upside-down, and pounded my cartoon family with its head. Disturbing.

Ahhhh… just this minute I worked out where the elephant came from: we had friends over for dinner last night, and we talked about elephants being afraid of mice! Enter the elephant into my dream.

I’m pretty sure the house is my elephant. I can’t tame it all at once or even one bite at a time.

So this is it. I’m out of words for the day. And, again, I will be out of the house for most of the day, giving the elephant more time to grow even bigger.

But starting tonight, like every Friday night, I will be nibbling away at it right through the weekend.