I've Got Good News and Bad News...

...which do you want first?

Not that I can actually hear you, but I wanted to give you the option. Major Dad will sometimes come up to me with his "I'm about to go all Marine on somebody" look and ask me the same question. There's no right answer with him, because the bad news is usually really bad and the good news is usually something tossed on as an afterthought...like bubblegum flavored cough syrup. Sure it's sort of bubble gummy, but not enough to take away the rest of the nasty pharmaceutical taste.

But I digress (as usual)...so here's the good news...I'm writing a new book. Yay! And the bad news? I don't know when I'll be updating the blog. Boo! Here's what I have recently discovered, trying to research and write a book while homeschooling a 9 year old social butterfly and a 5 year old who has the uncanny ability to break anything just by looking at it, is a wee bit difficult. And by wee bit, I mean stupefyingly ridiculous.

Here's how it generally goes:

Me: (nose buried in research books, pen frantically scribbling notes that no one but me can read)

Ella: May I use your scissors?

Me: Sure. (back to scribbling)

Ella: The orange ones or the blue ones?

Me: Doesn't matter, help yourself.

Ella: Thanks!

Jack: Mommy, can I have scissors?

Me: No.

Jack: Can I have glue?

Me: No.

Jack: Can I have tape?

Me: (sigh) Why do you want tape?

Jack: So I can make a mouse.

Ella: Do we have any glitter?

Me: Wait, what? A mouse?

Ella: No, glitter. Why would I want a mouse?

Jack: Elllllaaaaa! It's my mouse.

Me: Why do you need glitter?

Ella: For the spaceship.

Jack: Oooooh, can I have glitter for a spaceship too?

Me: No!

Ella: No me or no Jack?

Me: Yes tape. No glitter. Now please go play. (sigh. Resume research and scribbling...but now my notes don't even make sense to me.)

Or for a better example...right now Ella and Jack are attempting to play baseball inside the house using a Beanie Baby and a yardstick. Poor Beanie Baby.

Help! I Think I Just Bought Mom Jeans

I love jeans. I literally live in my jeans. All day, every day...jeans, jeans, jeans. I understand that there are other types of pants in existence. I just don't understand why they are necessary in life. I own a pair of khakis (a pair...singular) and 2 pairs of black pants. But my go-to bottom half of any outfit would be jeans.

So you can imagine the trauma I went through when I looked down a few days ago and spotted a hole in the knee of my favorite jeans. Ugh! Fortunately I happened to know of a department store that was having a sale on jeans. So I threw on another pair of jeans and headed off to the mall.

Now, I think it's fair to say that jeans shopping can be an emotionally exhausting experience for many women...including me. And shopping for jeans immediately following the holidays...hmmm, let's evaluate the wisdom of that plan, shall we? After a holiday season marked by family dinners, church dinners, friend dinners, leftover dinners, cookie exchanges, cookie gifts and cookies for chubby holiday icons, chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate...let's go shopping for pants that cover and/or accentuate every festively blessed curve and try them on in a dressing room lit with florescent bulbs so unflattering that even Thomas Edison would say "whoa, that's some bad lighting" and surrounded by mirrors on every side. Joy to the world, right ladies?

Anyway, so there I am trying on jeans, heaving a sigh, discarding them, fetching new pairs from the shelves, heading back to the exact same dressing room (I don't know why I do that...some sort of strange territorial shopping thing) and repeating the whole process. Several times. I tried on the exact same pair of jeans that I had just worn a hole in, but for some reason I didn't like them this time around. Couldn't have anything to do with the truffles my husband got me for Christmas. Clearly Levi's has had a change in their manufacturing process.

I finally decided to get a straight leg, as opposed to my usual usual boot cut. Why? Well, I thought I'd get a new pair of boots and I wanted to be able to stuff the jeans into the boots. Don't you just love how a new pair of jeans necessitates a new pair of boots? That's logic, right there. So I finally settled on a pair and went home. (Yes, I paid for them. I was just trying to move the narrative along.) Then the next day as I put on my new jeans I was struck by a sudden and terrifying thought. Did I just buy mom jeans???

So now I need an exact definition of mom jeans. Can I get away with the natural waist, straight leg if I don't wear a tucked in polo shirt and belt? Or am I totally up the mom fashion creek? Why can't stores label them "mom jeans" like they do "skinny jeans" so I know to avoid that shelf? Better yet, why can't we have truth in jeans labeling across the board? Imagine how much easier your shopping would be if they were labeled "jeans only a teenage pop star should wear" or "jeans you can't sit down in" or "jeans that make you look like a soccer mom, but they're really comfortable"?

Where's that Occupy movement?

Happy Tuesday!