Miscellanea: from answers.com, “pl.n. Miscellaneous items or written works collected together.” 

Well, if that doesn’t sum up a blog, I don’t know what does.  But in a more limited scope, this post is another one of those “random and unfocused” shotgun approaches. Let’s get it on! 

Update 08/04, afternoonish: I really started this post almost a week ago but it landed in the half-finished draft chill chest for a while, so forgive any dissonant time references.

Cute Stuff:

Introducing the "Where's Waldo?" hound, AKA Tessa the Squiggly

♦ Last night, while desperately trying to finish watching the latest DVR’d episode of Chopped (I love you, Ted Allen!), my dear daughter asked to have a tea party.  And I was pretty willing to buy her off with just about anything as long as it posed no imminent bodily threat, so I agreed to her tea party if she’d JUST SHUT UP ALREADY AND LET ME SEE THE LAST 10 MINUTES go find something quiet to play with for a few minutes.   So she gave us a brief respite and let us finish watching one of the weirdest Chopped dessert battles ever.  Anyway, I then prepared a teapot of iced tea (hoping to prevent any random scalding of important body parts) and cut up a couple of snickerdoodles to stand in for scones.  K then played the perfect hostess to us, her captive guests, as she poured the tea from a real china teapot into a random assortment of plastic play tea-ware (I got the sugar bowl and FF got the cream pitcher!) and distributed “scones”.   She even improvised a fake British accent.  Cutest tea party EVER.  As I sipped my cold tea and absorbed the party ambiance, I was reminded of how obsessed I was with this very same activity when I was her age.  Usually my dad was the unwitting victim…errr…guest and it was loads of fun (for me).  Too bad he didn’t have DVR technology!

♦ Lately during pretend play, K has developed a habit of providing “instant replays” and I find it to be HYSTERICAL.  She will randomly run up to me, hold her hand up flat and tell me to LOOK AT THE SCREEN and watch the video of whatever recent feat / trick / crash / action hero sequence she just completed.  Sometimes she even critiques herself!  She’s a virtual one-girl Olympic production!

♦ We recently opened some long-stored boxes of my childhood favorite stuffed animals.  K has gone NUTS for them and keeps raiding the boxes for more friends to play with, while in the meantime her poor mother tries to figure out a more permanent critter housing solution.  I love watching her find so much joy in my treasures, but I sometimes get little twinges of pseudo-jealousy…those are MY critters!

♦ Last week, I had to make a solo overnight trip to Gmom’s to deliver a tire (long boring story), and when I called K to tell her goodnight, she told me to “be sure to call her if I got lonely at night and she would sing me a lullaby and make me feel better”.  AWWWW!

Scary/frustrating/unpleasant/overwhelming stuff:

♦ Holy crap, fall is almost here!  Not only will my summer reprieve from graduate school be over [pathetically crying on the inside at the prospect], but it also represents a big rush at work for the first couple months of the semester.  Time to lace up the proverbial running shoes and stock up on therapeutic adult beverages.  And of course, we are glad K will be back to school twice a week and have the extra engagement, but we are definitely not looking forward to all the cross-town transportation again.  Ugh.  I have extremely low tolerance for wading through traffic.

My beautiful baby bird, Leilani

♦ Dear god, we got invaded last weekend.  Gmom gleefully delivered a large quantity of furniture, pets, books and other misc. personal stuff that had been put into storage when I graduated from college.  (OK, the pets weren’t really “in storage” but anyhoo…)  Somehow I should have known all that stuff was going to come back to haunt me, but I’m pretty good at focused denial.  Oh well.  The furniture is an assortment of inherited goodies and I am grateful for all the upgrades, but still overwhelmed.  Gmom is currently trying to streamline her household and claims that since I now have a house, I must reclaim my “abandoned” pets.  For the record, they weren’t abandoned…I simply moved out of the house…I mean, that is the job of younger siblings, right, to take up the torch as their elders move out?  Humbug. So our little clueless family has been increased by 1 female eclectus parrot, and 1 female squiggly italian (miniature) greyhound.  Holy crap.  I’m pretty sure that the cats want to kill us.  Cookie, so far, has retaliated by going into heat and yowling her furry little head off 24 hours a day.  [sob.]

♦ This is a continuation of the last point, but my soul hurts at the thought of receiving a bunch more boxes of stuff that I have no idea what to do with, when I still have a good handful of unpacked boxes from moving into the house *cough* a year ago this week *cough*.   This is partly my fault, due to summer apathy and generally feeling overwhelmed.  Yes, I realize it is silly to hang on to stuff that has been in boxes for a year untouched and unmissed.  But especially when it comes to my books (I have a dream that one day I’ll have a cozy library FILLED with all my favorite books), just because I don’t read them yearly doesn’t mean I want to part with them. 

♦ K has taken to accusing me of being an “awful mother” and threatening to “not be a part of the family” any more whenever she gets upset / insulted / frustrated / bored / angry.  Why is everything always my fault? Why do I still feel guilty at times, even when I clearly have no logical reason to? Why does she scream and holler whenever I wash her hair, but she cooperates without a peep if her father does it?  Give me a break, kid.  Please? Really, PLEASE?