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We’re all green around here. At this moment, my sinuses are all over the green movement. I hate them. I want to rip them out. I want to stomp on them and run them through my Cuisinart, squeeze them dry and then light them on fire. I have great displeasure with regard to my sinuses. But enough about my ongoing battle with the plague of death that continually resurfaces just when I think it’s safe to stop buying honey and lemons by the truckload.

Laylee and Magoo are trying to be more green. Yesterday I discovered that Laylee had gone commando to preschool. She couldn’t tell me why but I can only assume it was to save space in the washing machine and conserve energy.

Magoo likes to “reuse” the water in his cup at dinner by repeatedly backwashing the same liquid (and a few of its friends) back into his cup.

Both of them are vehemently opposed to slave labor, especially when it involves me forcing them to pick up their eleventy billion tiny plastic toys from all over the floor and under my bed pillow without compensation. I’m pretty sure they’re both for fair trade too. At the very least I frequently hear my little activists chanting about things not being “fair” and whining to each other that they want to “trade” toys.

I think I’ll take my little green nasals to bed now but before I do, I have one question for you – Does it count as “clean living” if behind my sink full of filthy dishes I have a garden window full of vegetable starts?

We’re giving away a couple of copies of a great book over at SMB.com. Go enter the fun!

I’ve had a few comments about my new profile picture over at Parenting.com. What?! I actually had a decent photo taken of myself to use as a bio picture when I write and attend conferences?! I’m no longer using the 2-year-old picture of myself makeup-free, crouched by the door at my in-laws’ house cropped close so you couldn’t see the kids snuggled up to me?!

My sister Becky is a photographer and she took me and the kids into the studio for an impromptu photo session while we were in Utah. We had a blast and came out with some great shots, although I sort of wish I’d thought to wash Magoo’s face and lose 30 lbs beforehand. I also wish Dan had been there. She’s a great photographer, eh? (Mouse over the photos for commentary.)

I DID get my hair cut and colored a few days before. I went in for highlights and had been so impressed with the hairdresser’s style that I told her to do whatever she wanted. She gave me bangs and made me blonde. It’s not something I would have ever been brave enough to ask for but I really love it. This is the first time since Junior High that I’ve had bangs I liked.

When Laylee saw me, she said, “You don’t look like my mom!”

The truth is I look like her mom with a wig on her head. But it’s a good wig, a wig I enjoy wearing, a wig I probably can’t afford to upkeep for very long. It’s fun.

I was teaching my 9-year-olds at church today and they were sort of blown away by the transformation. One little girl kept repeating, “You look SO different.” Finally I told her, “Yeah, it’s different but we’ll get used to it.”

“No,” she said, “I will NEVER get used to it.”

Okay.

I’ve been having space issues…

One of the major highlights of my Blogher New York trip last week was reconnecting with Jen Lemen, a beautiful woman inside and out whom I met in Chicago last year. She is one of the most genuine and loving people I have ever met. To be around her is to feel good about yourself and hopeful about the world.

She is gathering donations for a trip to Rwanda to spread hope and relief and visit the daughters of a dear friend who is not able to travel back home to be with her girls. If you have a few spare dollars in your couch or PayPal account or if you have some free money left over from your tax return, please send it Jen’s way. I can guarantee you that good will be done on your behalf.

Here’s my sister wearing the extra pair. A perfect size 10.

I really don’t remember my mom being this tired but looking back I’m sure she was. When we complained that she was waking us up too early in the morning, she was the one WAKING US UP TOO EARLY IN THE MORNING, which meant she was already awake and probably had been for quite some time. When we were up sick in the night, we complained about being sleepy the next day but she was up with us too and with who knows how many other kids. (I bet she knew how many.)

My sleep has been spotty at best this trip. The kids have taken turns with nightmares, stomach flu, ear infections and general crankishness. We all drove down to Utah together, had a wonderful time at the wedding and then Dan headed back to Seattle to work and be a responsible dad-type person while I’ve continued to vacate without him.

We bounce from relative to relative like leeches with short attention spans and the kids are getting sick of it. They like ALL the relatives and become attached to their various pets, bedding, and stacks of paper and then I tear them away to the next location. Their adjustment period gets longer and longer.

Most recently we’ve been staying with my sister in a king-sized family bed, Laylee, Magoo and I rolling, bonking and waking each other up throughout the night. Magoo isn’t happy unless he’s squished up beside me, his hand on my arm and his nursing lips fluttering in and out in memory of their glory days. Laylee finds his closeness to me highly unfair and wishes I would lay on her side… here… noooo… HERE… noooo… RIGHT HERE where my head will be placed just perfectly to allow the atomic zombie-slaying nightlight to sear my corneas with its rays of protection.

My body is becoming trained to wake up every 45 minutes. If the kids don’t call my name, I wake up automatically to check what’s wrong with them. I snap awake and spend 30 seconds trying to figure out which child has sent me the telepathic distress signal, then flop back on my pillow when I realize there’s nothing wrong… yet.

Right now I’m on my way to the BlogHer Business conference in New York City. I’m speaking on a panel with some ladies from Method and I’m nervous and excited to visit the Big Fruit for the first time. It seems a bit skeery to me but I’ve packed several pairs of shoes and multiple electronic devices so I think it will all work out okay in the end.

I miss my Dan and he’s too still sleeping to call. I miss my kids but I don’t want to call and remind them to miss me. When I left them with grandma, they saw me off with kisses and a polite nudge to the side as I was blocking Curious George on the TV.

Sure. Stay loyal to the troublemaking monkey. We’ll see if he carries you to the bathroom in the middle of the night and makes up songs about flowers, butterflies, sharks and flannel on demand.

Read All About It

I think I just ran a red light. I was driving along in the stupor of a death-inducing chest cold and when I looked in my rearview mirror I noticed a red light behind me. Maybe it was green my direction but I honestly don’t remember looking at it.

Then I pulled into the pharmacy drive-through and sat there for a few minutes staring at the window before I finally realized I had to press the call button to alert them that I was waiting. I was picking up cough syrup. Stinkin’ lousy cough syrup. That’s all they would give me at the clinic. I was hoping for morphine or a throat and lung amputation. But cough syrup!

I get so peeved when I go to the doctor and they say that I just have the same old virus that everyone else has, no big deal. If everyone else has what I have, then the pandemic must be here because I don’t care what they say, I can’t have more than 10 or 15 minutes to live.

I feel like I’ve caught everything this winter, 2 chest colds, sinus infections, stomach flu, a menacing hangnail and split ends. My dentist even suggested recently that I need to go to “tongue rehab.”

As I sat in the pharmacy parking lot waiting for my stinkin’ cough syrup to have the sticker stuck on it, I watched a pair of mummified senior old people inching their way to their parked car. They were walking directly towards a yellow Camaro and I was hoping against hope that it was theirs. Sadly they climbed into the burgundy Oldsmobile beside it. It would have cheered me greatly if theirs was the sports car and I really needed some cheering right about then.

At this point in my sickness I’m half-waiting for some bearded figure to pop up on Al Jazeera and claim responsibility for a biological warfare attack on the Seattle suburbs. Whatever they used, it’s working. I surrender.

I’m holding a giveaway of a set of awesome GreenPans over at Seattle Mom Blogs.

They are the first line of cookware using a non-stick coating that’s free of toxic chemicals that can be released into your food and into the air. They can cook at temperatures up to 800F without releasing anything harmful. I find this awesome because not only do they meet my criteria for healthier cooking, but they’re also dishwasher safe, something that drives me nuts about my current non-stick cookware.

Head on over there and enter to win a 6-piece set.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

I started the day with three hours of sleep. My furniture was rearranged. The contents of my cupboards were emptied out all over the counters of my kitchen. I felt that progress had been made in the wee hours of the morning even though my house looked as though it had been ransacked.

All day long I’ve wanted to fall on a couch, a chair or a piece of linoleum and crash like I’ve rarely crashed before in my life. My eyes are drooping, my yawns are huge and everything I hear sounds a bit garbley. But I’ve fought the exhaustion in an attempt to teach my body to shed its vampiric tendencies and start sleeping in the night and feeling wakeful during the day.

I hope it counts as being awake if you’re walking around in a stupor saying, “Wha-?” to your kids whenever they talk to you. Laylee finally grabbed my arm today and said, “You’re NOT LISTENING!” I was trying, really I was, but the flickering updates on Freecycle were mesmerizing and although they were almost too blurry to read, they were just blurry enough to keep my vague attention.

Laylee’s story about the precise rules for entrance to her cardboard swimming pool were not.

She has a cardboard swimming pool in the middle of the living room floor which she is using while she saves up her allowance for an in-ground pool. Yes, she is really saving up her $2/week to buy an in-ground pool for the backyard and I am not man enough to rain on that parade. I told her that if she saved enough money, I would let her install one.

From the other room this afternoon I could hear the kids pelting on each other, followed by a loud yell of, “Now I’m telling mom FOR REAL!”

“Oh GOSH!” I thought as I waited in the kitchen bracing myself to be “told FOR REAL!” And FOR REAL it was. Apparently MAGOO STARTED IT and then Laylee finished it and we began a fun-filled round of time out. They were seated a few feet apart with Laylee glaring and Magoo bawling. The indignity of sitting still against a wall is really unbearable for the little man.

Within a few seconds, they were giggling and whispering back and forth, an act of friendship and solidarity I pretended not to notice. When I was sure they had cooled off nicely, I went over and had them sit across from each other holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes.

“I want you to tell Magoo one thing you love about him.”

“Magoo. I love you because you sleep with me in my room and we have fun together and laugh when we’re supposed to be sleeping and play when we’re supposed to be sleeping and because you’re my best friend.”

“Now Magoo. What do you love about Laylee?”

“I love you because you sleep-ith me… and friends.”

Then they embraced, sealing their love with the promise to do many things together in joy and siblingly love while they were supposed to be sleeping.

Maybe I should wake Dan up next time I can’t sleep at 3am. From what the kids say, insomnia’s much more fun with two.