What I've Been Up To, Part One

There are two main reasons I don't post: one, I have nothing to write about. Or two, I have so much to write about that I can't find the time to sit down and when I do sit down, I don't know where to begin. It's been more of the latter. At the moment, Doodles is in kindergarten (I started to write preschool--still can't wrap my head around having a kindergartener) and Pie is actually, kind of, sort of playing nicely behind me. If this post ends abruptly, you'll know it's because "playing nicely" turned into "complete meltdown," which is what happens every day. The question is the when.

I've had two trips to New York, a kindergarten conference, holiday shopping, and house building shenanigans. But that's not what's compelled me to blog today. Today I blog because my bedroom smells. Specifically, of bologna. Why does my bedroom smell of bologna? I have no idea. No one in the family eats bologna. Why does that compel me to blog? Again, no idea. But lying in bed last night, unable to get the smell of bologna out of my nose, I thought, "I should blog about this." So here I am.

Actually the whole apartment smells. I sort of think that this might be a reflection upon my cleaning skills. I'm pretty good about vacuuming almost daily (the kids eat over a rug), but the nice bottles of environmentally-friendly cleaners I bought in a fit of optimism when we first moved in have remained pretty much untouched. But they sure do look pretty! Our contractor feels pretty optimistic that we can move back into the house the first week of February. That's just about seven weeks. And we're spending a week and a half of that in Miami Beach for New Year's. So that's just five and a half weeks of smell. Clean? Or stink? For five and a half weeks, I can live with stink. I'm practical like that.

While I'm here, I might as well tell you about New York. The first trip with the family over Thanksgiving was actually a real success. The kids were engaged and had fun and basically left me alone. Perfect! On Thursday morning, after we all watched the parade, I cooked and my dad, well, I guess he kind of supervised, the Nana, the Tweedle Twirp, and the Adam took the kids ice skating at Bryant Park. A lovely (but ill timed--even with a pre-cooked turkey, I was off) dinner ensued. The next day, the foursome of my family headed to the Fire Museum, which was quite interesting, although I made the mistake of attempting to explain 9/11 to Doodles. I thought he'd think it was something removed, a long, long time ago, but when he realized it was only seven years ago, he said, "Mom, that's not long ago at all!" After the museum, Adam and Pie met up with my parents to go to MOMA. Pie loved the video exhibition and the "painting with the farmer. The green one."

Meantime, Doodles and I went shopping in SoHo. The boy is game, I'll tell you. I haven't really blogged much about it, but I've become quite crafty in my old age ("crafty" in a Martha Stewart way; not a Beastie Boys way). I haven't written much about it primarily because I plan on giving some of my handicrafts as gifts and I don't want any of the surprise given away here. I really wanted to make a pilgrimage to a fabric store I remembered from my days as a New Yorker, and Doodles was actually very well behaved. Of course, we stopped at Evolution and we picked up a pair of glittens for him, but he sat almost patiently while I went through button boxes. We then headed up for the East Village to Tweeds's apartment, which is better than any store for the toys in it. We had to tear Doodles away to head for lunch at Benny's.

And with my quesadilla grande, I'm going to leave you for the moment. No, no meltdowns (yet). Just time to run off to kindergarten pickup....