The dog ate my homework and other unacceptable excuses

So. Yesterday I spent hours on a one page paper. It is very bad. While I was purportedly working on said paper, I ate four cookies, two bites of brownie, some French fries and Rainbow’s leftover chicken tenders. I helped Taz with his math homework. He read to me, and then Rainbow read to me. We sorted their spelling words. I folded laundry. We watched Zoey 101. I hate Zoey 101. Then I updated my blog and read several others. I cried for awhile because Annnnn is threatening to deprive me of her wit for an entire month. I celebrated Debbie Jo’s phenomenal swim at Naylor’s with her sweet swim angel TG40. I went up and down the stairs 45 times to get water, rub heads, and finally to threaten sanctions if a certain two children did not go to sleep…NOW! I talked to a friend on the phone. I put laundry away. I sorted my sock drawer. Okay not really but I might as well have.

My paper meanwhile is in sad shape. There are some random thoughts, a disclaimer, and a few partial references stuck at the bottom. That’s it.

My excuse at least to myself is that it’s a stupid assignment.

It really is.

But still, I have to do it. And do it reasonably well.

I think I have some toilets to clean …
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Sunshine

My life of late has shrunken to include only school and work. It is fairly tedious. I get up, get the kids ready for school and on the bus, go to work, help the kids with their homework, go to school or to a team meeting to work on homework… and that’s about it.

But suddenly a ray of sunshine entered my life. Not really, because it has been cold and rainy here the last two days. But metaphorically, my world got brighter on Wednesday when I met some of my TriGirlfriends for lunch. I miss those girls.

We were a small but rowdy group and somehow as lunch wore on, more and more tables around us became vacated. Lest you think the restaurant was just emptying, let me assure you that was not the case. We were at an island surrounded by empty tables with an outer ring of all full tables.

One man who inexplicably pulled his table very close to ours learned more than he ever wanted to know about breast feeding.

I had fun dinner plans Wednesday night too. All the women in my graduate program, two of our professors and several women from previous classes went to dinner. I think I must have carried some TriGirl mojo with me because this group was pretty rowdy too and we closed the place down. After we drank all their wine.

It was a good day and reminded me that I need to lift my head every now and then to reconnect with the people I love and plan some fun with the people I spend a lot of suffer time with.

Am I prohibited from participating in amateur events now?

Let me set the stage - I learned to golf as an adult. It does not feel natural and I imagine I look a bit like an out-of-control windmill. If windmills had big thighs. A good 90% of the time that I hit the ball, I either miss it entirely or it rolls about four inches.

And that's as good as it got when I actually used to play fairly regularly...

Since I was pregnant with Taz nine years ago, I've barely swung a club. The first time was at the driving range at our family reunion in July, when Rainbow critiqued my swing and actually gave me some great tips. She also did a pretty entertaining imitation of my form, with her little butt sticking way out. It looked like a combo golf swing/dance move. And I'm sure her imitation had far more style than my actual move.

The next day, Scouter and I played in a couples tournament. It was totally my style - our foursome of two couples competed against another foursome in a best ball format. That means we all hit our shot, then we picked up our ball and carried it to the best player's location to hit again. The pro told us that ladies are allowed to tee all our drive and fairway shots. Since I have a tendency to top everything, this was beautiful for me. We didn't use many of my shots, but I didn't humiliate myself either.

A few days later, Scouter, the kids and I played a par 3. I could not have played worse. Or cared less. Rainbow and I bailed after the front nine. My only regret is that I was such a poor example to her. But we had fun.

So fast forward a couple months, and somehow I got roped into playing in a work event. I was suckered in by a smooth talker who told me they wanted a woman on every team and that it was all for fun. He said his goal was to make all the other business teams wish they worked for us because we were having so much fun. Hey I can do that. My commitment was to hit a drive when the women's tee offered a significant advantage, putt first, drink beer, and have fun.

Turns out, I was the only woman who played for my company. In general there were not many women at the event other than the beer wenches. I was paired, thankfully, with three guys I know. But I didn't know they were expert golfers! One guy played in college and the other two must play a lot. Even when I had a big advantage on the tee and the dumb luck to hit a decent shot (for me), theirs were better. I didn't even bother to hit any fairway shots.

Somehow I managed to get my tee shot on the green on the par 3 that was the closest to the hole pin for the women. I overshot the pin by a good 30 feet but the guys on my team encouraged me to fill in my name and location anyway. The green was long and narrow, so maybe no other woman would get on it. I have to admit, I thought it was laughable.

We played on, and I even drank a few beers. For awhile, they even made my play better. Or perhaps they just made me think I was playing better. No matter...

After the round, there was a cookout and an awards ceremony. We finished at nine under and the winner was something like 18 under. There was much speculation about cheating. We left before the awards.

Later that night, my neighbor came over to deliver my prize. Lo and behold, I won closest to the pin for the women! I got a nice plaque and a $50 gift certificate to the golf club.

I've got a huge golf bug right now.

And I bet Annika Sorenstam is pretty nervous.
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I scoff at high gas prices

Seriously, have any of us ever seen this in our lifetimes? Check out the $0.599 per gallon rate at the bottom right.

I used my Ukrops valued customer card and saved $3.50 per gallon on gas tonight. Sweet! For those of you not in Richmond, Ukrops is a local grocery store that cut a deal with local gas stations . For ever $50 you spend in groceries, you get $0.50 off per gallon of gas. I obviously hadn't been taking advantage of this offer... until now!

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Commiserating

So...

I'm on day two of Scouter being out of town on a business trip and I just read Dooce's hilarious account of being home alone with her preschooler. OMG that woman is funny. I feel so much better. At least I didn't decide to do an arts and crafts project!

We spent much of yesterday shopping for Halloween costumes, birthday presents, and a new backpack. Today thank God they had school. We haven't had a meal at home yet. I forced myself to have a salad tonight since all I've eaten for two days is red meat.

It is 10 p.m. Taz is still awake and Rainbow is asleep in my bed. I call this a victory compared to last night when they both slept in my bed and I got no sleep whatsoever. Every time I tried to sneak into one of their beds, someone woke up and wanted to know why I wasn't in the middle and where I was going.

I am happy that Scouter is coming home tomorrow but a little concerned about all the dish washing and vacuuming I have to do in preparation.
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Mommy of the Year

I was in a meeting this week with a woman who had a plaque that read:

Raising children is like being pecked to death by chickens.

That really resonated with me.
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Here's the fairy tale I'll tell my daughter... when she's a little older!

Misnomer

If this is "labor" day I gotta tell you, I love it.

We slept in this morning then enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before heading out for a hike. The one we did today was classified as "difficult" and there were some great rocky ascents and descents. It took us an hour and 45 minutes to hike about two miles. That's either a testament to the difficulty or too our casual mindset.

After hiking, we hung out on the deck a bit and Scouter got a wild hair and started popping chillies. (Those are beers in Scouter lingo.) We lit the grill for chops and corn. I opened a bottle of Blue Mountain Brewery Mandolin artisanal ale. Now Scouter and I are both very mellow while Taz and Rainbow run circles around the house.

Taz tasted a sip of beer and now he says he wants to live in the mountains forever so that all he has to do for the rest of his life is hike and drink beer.
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Wow what a view!

Here are some photos from our various hikes this weekend. Enjoy!