3600 Square Feet of Space

but this is where they want to play...

I suppose if we ever need to downsize it won't be a problem for them.

Attack of the Killer...

fuzz.

That's right, people.  I was unloading the dishwasher and all of a sudden something was coming at me, swinging wildly under my arm, and then toward my waist.  I tried to get away from it, and I might have screaled (something between a scream and a squeal) as I dodged the thing that was obviously threatening my life.  I couldn't go far because the dishwasher was open there beside me.  I began to feel trapped.  I fought hard, though, and I was finally able to free myself from the tangly, leechy clutches of this monstrous creature. 

I was sure it was a roach.  You know about my relationship with the devil-bugs, don't you? 

Imagine my relief when I saw that I was trying to escape the mad grip of a giant fuzzwad from my sweater!

And don't you think I felt silly, not one bit.  The roaches are a force to be reckoned with.  Even if it's in my head.

Just For Fun, and I'm Procrastinating

The other day when we were having our "blast to the past" fun, Eliana would not be left out.  She made it clear that her hair must go in curlers, and her picture must be taken.  She was indignant if I left the room with the camera..."You haffa take my pit-chure!!" she would cry out.

Am I one to pass up photo opportunities?

I think not.

For a long time I thought Eliana looked exactly like me, like the spitting-image kind of likeness, especially me when I was a toddler.  I think all of our children are a good mix of both Mike and me, but my memory of my baby pictures led me to believe that she favored mommy more than Michaela and Christian did.

While I still think she looks very much like me

when I look at our pictures side by side, I can see

there are differences that I couldn't see in my mind.

The big-time belly laugh is where I think the resemblance is high.

She has my very round cheeks, and pointed chin.  She has my goofy, charmingly close together, sticking out a little bit, will surely require braces and teeth extraction front teeth.  She has my happy eyes.

But look closely and you'll see my face is longer, and hers is rounder.  She has a small indentation on her cheek, that is barely noticeable except when she smiles really big.

There are certainly some clear similarities in spite of the differences, but I think this next picture is the best capture of how much she resembles her mommy...

Could there be any doubt as to where this girl came from?  My genes, they are strong. 

OoooWeeeOooo I Look Just Like Buddy Holly...

Recently I broke my glasses.

I did.  I had them in my hands and I twisted the stem right off.  I was trying to be so gentle, and just tweak the part that goes over your ear ever so slightly.  Apparently I am as gentle as an angry Incredible Hulk. 

I am also as smart as I am gentle.  I left the remainder of my glasses on the table next to my bed, and Eliana finished them off.  I suppose she may have thought she was doing the right thing, since Mommy had twisted one stem off, she was helping by doing the other.  It was a total act of kindness. 

I was left with...

I got these frameless glasses several years ago.  They were a big change for me.  For a long time I had what you might call chunky glasses.  I don't remember my first pair, but these are hard to forget...

These glasses along with my braces made quite a combination.  At least my Richard Simmons and Diana Ross' love-child hair was growing out.  Just in case you missed that...

Once I started wearing contacts there was no looking back for me.  Glasses of any kind were a thing of the past. 

Until I had babies. 

Babies require waking up in the middle of the night, and sleeping at all hours of the day to make up for it.  I couldn't be fooling around with contacts all day and night.  In and out, in and out.  Forget it!  I decided to get some new glasses just before Michaela was born.  It was agonizing.  To revisit something that brought back so many memories and made me feel just like I was back in the seventh grade was hard.  But Mike was with me and we talked with the sales person, and I tried on hundreds of pairs, and we reasoned about which kind of frame would be good for such a strong prescription (I'm practically blind).  We finally settled on what came to be known as the Buddy Hollys. 

For the next four years or so, I wore these glasses A LOT.  I did wear my contacts for special occasions, and during the summer when I wore sunglasses, but with small children, it was so convenient to have glasses!

After Michaela and Christian got a little bigger, I began to wear my contacts more again.  I felt like I looked less tired, and it helped me to have more normal days when I didn't think,"I can just close my eyes right now!" 

Then I got pregnant with Eliana...my prescription had changed and so had the times.  I needed an update.  Buddy Holly was so...1950s.  Or 2001.  I ended up with a very different pair of glasses.  These didn't even have frames.  But the tech who made them was confident that they could still handle my prescription.

(YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE PRESCRIPTION!  I'm thinking of you, Ree!)

After Eliana was born I wore these glasses A LOT.

But again, I often felt like they made me look tired and feel tired.  It's just too easy to close your eyes when you don't have your contacts in!  Or maybe I need toothpicks.

At any rate, I have been trying to wear my contacts more lately, especially since my little accident.  But there are defiinitely times when I just don't want to hold my eyelids open and stick little plastic circles onto my eyeballs.  The eyeballs rebel.  And for those times, I have once again pulled out the Buddy Hollys...

It's like we were twins separated at birth...and by 38 years.

Maybe I should have been born in another decade...there seems to be no escaping it.

And for all of you nerds out there who are perplexed as to the way I used Buddy Holly's name, with an "s" and no punctuation...I tried to figure out how I should write it and that seemed like the right way.  It's not possessive, it's not plural, and I couldn't find a hard and fast rule about using a proper noun this way.  I'm happy to learn if you have info about that.  I think that would qualify me as a nerd, as well.

You Know You're (This) Christina When...

You buy cards a month early for a major holiday...

And then stash them away and completely forget until you find them just before said holiday.  (For two separate holidays, in fact.)

You always remember to take your camera to the kids' soccer games...

But never remember their water bottles.  (Um, priorities, people.)

You leave the house in order to return an item to a store...

And realize after running a couple of other errands first you forgot the item by the door at home.

You leave the house in order to run a very particular errand (like pick up the dry cleaning)...

And arrive home having forgotten to run that errand at all.

You leave the house with your children wearing inappropriate attire, either unknowingly or knowingly.

You lose your sunglasses since you haven't worn them since last summer...

But find them when looking for your add-on flash.  (Of course they are together!)

You boil some eggs for your daughter and husband...

And find them in the pan on the stovetop six hours later.  (The burner was turned off-whew!)

You schedule a fun Easter Egg hunt-attending adventure with a friend of the family...

While forgetting about your daughter's soccer game THAT IS ON THE CALENDAR and is scheduled for the same time as the egg-finding-animal-petting-bouncehouse-jumping-cookie-eating-at-10:30-in-the-morning adventure in the park.  (I did realize it the night before...saved from my double-booking by my own brain!)

You break your own glasses in one quick and artful move trying to adjust the stem.

You realize your sleeves need to be pulled up a bit while you are getting dinner ready, so you throw your arms up quickly in order to adjust your sleeves...

And crack the two eggs you are holding, one in each hand, on the hood of your oven and watch as they land in a glass baking dish containing homemade marbles on your stovetop.  (Um, I meant to do that part.  Yeah, that's right.)  (I have to make marbles, since mine have gone totally missing.)

You schedule a follow-up dentist appointment for your son for the morning his class begins their end-of-the-year achievement testing, as well as for thirty minutes before you are supposed to be back to pick up your youngest daughter from her co-op class.  (What?  What is a calendar?  There is a calendar that will fit in my purse?)

The one thing I seem to be good at is making this list longer...

I'll give a pretend million dollars to anyone who can guess what I have decided my theme song in life is.