Where Do I Go Now

Hmmmm, May 27th to July 9th is a long time. A lot has happened. Here's some of it:

We enjoyed hanging out all together while we could as school wound down.

The Ninja Princessa turned 13 and started taking martial arts again. (Tae Kwon Do this time, not karate but I'm not changing her name because it just wouldn't have the same ring. )

She got a silver bracelet from her brothers that says, "A sister is a forever friend." (They picked it out!) She almost cried which made them go all boy and start hitting each other to relieve the tension. (They did not put up with hugs.)

I got a hair cut. Woo hoo!

Chaos turned 16 and had a Cthulu tentacle "cake" only someone stole one of the tentacles before I could even take a picture. Boys! I'm sure I should have posted about this earlier too because I won't do it justice here, but Chaos has this new routine that he does about being oppressed because he's a "Ginger". It's a hilarious play on a combination of the red-headed step child being left out and Black Power rhetoric. (NOT to make light of real civil rights struggles. He more or less walks that line carefully.) I'll ask him to take out the trash and he starts in on how it's always the Ginger has to do the unwanted tasks (even though the chores rotate by week and it's his week on the schedule). He's got a couple of red-headed friends at school too that he calls his Brothers In Red. We've made jokes about him being the Ginga Ninja etc, etc. At one of our hilarity infused family dinners, Chaos interrupted a story the Princessa was telling and she interrupted right back saying something like, "Can it Ginger Snap!" We lost it. Hence the "Ginger Snap" on the cake.

Chaos tried to steal my Israeli Paratrooper canvas satchel so I got him one of his own with a skull on it.

Bet went to an oceanography institute for a week and built an underwater ROV (which I will have to get pictures of because it is very cool. She's going to do some great things with her students involving the topics she studied. She's trying to write a grant to get some sextants for her classroom. How cool is that?

We took pictures of the dogs' noses:
Tallulah -

Wasabi -

And Linus had a birthday. Bet and I decided to make it a "theme" birthday. We woke him up with the Secret Agent Man theme song and sent him on "missions" all day long (mostly to get his own birthday presents and to eat). He got clues and maps and had special agent assisting him.

Bet and I were Agent Smith and Agent Smith. We were bad ass. And we got to boss Linus around. It was all kinds of fun. Everyone had to wear X4/GM12 Eco-transponders (i.e. nametages). Agent-In-Training "The Bug" had a cool beetle on his and Agent "Slim Dunk" had a crazy cartoon WWF Wrestler. The evening ended with a party of 12 Special Agents converging on a little Indian restaurant around the corner for dinner. Good times!

There has also been some complete crappiness - mostly involving Mr. Tapioca. The court stuff is ridiculous and the tactics his red neck lawyer employs are stupid. (I hope Mr. Tapioca isn't paying that guy very much. I have yet to receive a document from him that has fewer than five spelling/grammar/punctuation mistakes. Seriously, the last thing I got was a list of questions that weren't even numbered correctly! That doesn't even go into the insanity of the content. I have had such a hard time resisting the urge to post that document here!!!) I think one of the reasons I haven't blogged is because I haven't wanted to spew about it all.

Chaos, Mayhem, and Havoc are all with him for the summer. I get to go visit and have the boys every other weekend. The Princessa is gone for 6 weeks (which used to seem long but is 3 full weeks less than the boys are gone!) Bug is an only child with us for the first time ever. It's a very different dynamic. Bug is still in school - and kicking ass. He's gotten nothing but A's so far! (Chaos finished his semester with straight A's too! The Princessa and Mayhem? Lucky to simply finish the year - especially Mayhem whose attention span was strained to the breaking point with weeks left to tough out! Havoc breezed through but doesn't get letter grades the way the middle and high schoolers do.) Bet is home for the summer and Linus is working from home. It is a summer completely different from any other.

The good news is the triathlon training is going well. We're on track for the San Francisco half marathon in a few weeks. (Our long run this weekend is an 8 miler!) We've already done a "mock tri" the same distance as the olympic distance we're signed up for in September (swim a mile, bike 26 miles, run a 10K) and we did it in less than the cut off time for the course. Since our main goal is to finish, it was a huge confidence booster!

I'm not sure what direction Lilymania is headed. There are some challenges to mommy blogging. It's hard to find the time to blog in the moment when we are in the midst of family activities and it's even harder to blog about my kids when they are all gone for the summer. I've found on my few attempts this summer that those posts come out pretty whiny! And there are only so many cute dog posts I can write. I don't plan on abandoning ship but I'm relatively content to drift aimlessly for a while. Maybe I'll play around with the format and layout and that will spark something - but until then... PEACE!

Photo Mania

Mayhem - did I tell you he's back on restriction? Yeah, FOUR D's on a progress report will do that to you. Good thing he's cute, eh?

Bug wanted to dye his hair black. It's a little blue and kind of elfin, but I think those are pluses in his book. He got A+'s in both of his classes! Yay! We like adult high school!

Wasabi says, "Where are mah eyes?"

Tallulah says, "Treats please!"

Kira says, "But I'm not even yours!"

The Ninja Princessa says, "Yay! I'm off restriction! I can play video games for the first time since February!"

Action shot of Havoc. And a close up of the dimple.

Linus on the porch with a look of "Quoi?"

Bet from faaaaaar away. Obviously I hadn't figured out the zoom yet.

Chaos being Calvin (will post more in this series tomorrow because they are pretty funny) and also him snuggling with Tallulah on my bed.

The kids brought me tortellini in bed (b/c I don't like breakfast foods). They were cute and silly and I love them to bits!!

Guess what I got for Mother's Day?? (And if you didn't guess cute pink camera then dude, what's wrong with you?) Peace.

Did I Mention She Was Snoring Too?

Tallulah Rockstar fell asleep with her beloved tennis ball IN HER MOUTH!

I had time to walk into the room, see her on the bed, get my camera out of the bag and take a few pictures before she woke up.

When she woke up, she gave me the evil eye.

Then she spit out the tennis ball and went back to sleep! Weird dog! (But note, she is still snuggling with her tennis ball!)

When Last We Blogged...

I was having a hard time keeping up my end of the posting regularly idea and it seems like not much has changed on that front! So sorry. Yet life here has been great even if I haven't been blogging about it! First - gratuitous cute dog pictures:

Tallulah is a social sleeper. She is happiest if she can find a person or two over which to drape herself. She's given up sleeping on Wasabi. He won't put up with it. She tries to skooch up to him but he scoots away.
Snuggling with her tennis ball as a last resort.

This is as close as he'll usually let her get. Although immediately after this picture Wasabi sat on Tallulah (who was still sleepy). He was looking at us taking his picture and I think he thought he was going to get a treat and assumed the "Good Dog Sit" position. (To make it clear, we are not in the habit of rewarding him for perching on his sister!) I wish we'd been able to get it on film, though. It was funny.
"Wait, take that one again. I blinked."


I would post some pictures of the kids but they won't hold still. Chaos is busy with his Warhammer 40K armies, Bug is kicking butt at school and leading some Tribal Wars, Mayhem has a new girlfriend (this one is also smart and cute - the boy has GOOD taste!), the Princessa is planning her 13th birthday, and Havoc has been busy playing the lead in his class play (Aladdin), baking, and talking people into playing Alhambra dice with him.

Linus and I celebrated our anniversary yesterday! We met at our friend Mat-a-tat's birthday party (which is fun because Mat met his now-wife at that very same party). We needed to go back up to IKEA to get more shelves for the boyos - so Linus and I made a little getaway of it and stayed the night in Virginia. It's been a pretty long time since he and I have had time just the two of us. It was great - although I talked his ear off about training. We laughed and caught up with each other, being silly and not on a time schedule. It was such a relaxing time! We did see a sign along the way that I wish I'd been able to take a picture of. It said (in large blue letters) GREEK HOUSE FAMILY ITALIAN RESTAURANT. (Maybe there's a whole trend of Greek Italian restaurants because Bet and I ate Tiramisu for dessert at the Casa Grecque outside of Montreal for my birthday a couple of years ago.) Anyway, that was one of the things besides the sheer pleasure of hanging out together that made us laugh.

Bet and I have been training. We have a mini-triathlon this weekend and we've added a half-marathon to our schedule for August in preparation for the oly tri in September. I'm pretty on fire about being athletic. I've met some really kind and encouraging triathletes. I'm also still writing - every day in fact - but there never seems to be enough time to get all the way into it. Strangely for a "stay home" mom - I'm out and about A LOT.

That's the fly by. Peace!

Snuggling With A Conehead

Tallulah is in need of comfort. Her idea of comfort is to wedge herself firmly against me or Wasabi - or preferably both of us at the same time - thereby insuring maximum discomfort for all of us. It is amazing how beat up her plastic cone is already. She has whacked it into doors and beds; she has licked it and chewed on it; she has lodged it in every small space she can find; and she has used the edges of it to scratch her incision.

The instruction sheet says to keep her calm. For seven days. Tallulah. Calm. Uh, right. I asked the vet (who, sidenote, is HILARIOUS - he's the one who stretched out her wrinkly skin the first time we saw him and said, "Damn! You could fit a whole 'nother dog in there!") how on earth I was supposed to keep her from running around like a crazy thing and he said, "Good luck with that." "Drugs, man, give me drugs!" "For her?" he asked. "Yes, of course for her." I said. "Sorry I can't help you there," he said, winking at me. (You would have to see this guy and the faces he makes maybe to think he's as funny as I think he is.) He did actually give us a once a day pain reliever for her - which seems to have zero to no calming effect on her. This is going to be a LONG week.

Mojo For Mutts

Tallulah Rockstar gets her lady parts surgically altered today so she cannot produce any baby rockstars. She's not allowed to eat this morning and she doesn't understand why. She's hopping around, whining at the door where the kibbles are kept, and throwing her bowl in the path of any creature with hands - all in hopes that someone will for the love of god remember to feed the starving redbone! If they gave out canine oscars for withering away - she'd win. Send her some love, ok? I'm trying not to be nervous for her, but I am.
Peace.

left handed blogging

i have a red-bone puppy adamantly curled up and snoring on my right arm. i have moved her several times but she immediately sneaks back up and plunks her head back down - pinning my arm to the bed. she's so insistent and it's been so long since anyone was this clingy - that i've decided to go with it. she's loud though. linus says to just pull on her tail to make her stop snoring, but i can't reach it. oh well. it's a good thing she's so cute.

Not Surprising (At All)

Currently my dog (Wasabi) is curled up on Bet's bed and Bet's dog (Tallulah) is curled up on my bed. We took Tallulah to the vet and asked about her habit of balancing on three legs to pee with the other leg raised up at a weird angle. "That," he said, "is a girl dog trying to pee like a boy dog." Which is strange because our boy dog pees like a girl dog. We bought them matching toys in different sizes - the small rope and squeaky snake for the puppy, the big rope and big squeaky snake for the big dog. It took them about two seconds to snatch the one meant for the other dog. Doggies, doggies, quite contrary - that's what we have.

Tallulah Tinklepants

It is hard to believe that a dog this tiny could piddle so much, so often. Just saying.

It's A Good Thing She's Cute

Tallulah decided at 4 a.m. that she was done with sleep. I'd forgotten that puppies keep baby sleep schedules. We took turns entertaining her - but it was Wasabi that did the best job. He's such a good big brother! He hops and nips and chases her but he's gentle. They played tug-o-war with that pathetic rag of a toy squirrel. Tallulah tried every trick she knows but Wasabi stood there like a rock. Then he backed up a step or two and dragged her. They both thought that was fun.

He better enjoy that while he can - she's going to be bigger than he is in about three months. He tuckered her out enough that we got another nap out of her. Now if only the adults in the house could catch a few extra zzz's.
Peace.

Dog Lips

Guess what we got today? She's a seven-week old Redbone Hound. Tallulah Rockstar is her "working title" so far. Linus wants to call her Red Sonja. Bet is still deciding what her permanent name is going to be. I'm going to call her Tallulah for now. She is fiesty and independent, sweet and such a gorgeous color. We went to Rebel Red Kennels to meet her. I have nothing to compare the kennel to. Maybe all kennels/breeders are gracious, have beautiful land, provide run space for each dog, have cozy and clean dog houses and well-mannered, beautiful dogs. It seems unlikely - but maybe they are all as wonderful as Rebel Red Kennels. Tallulah came right out and played with us. She and her brother puppy Fred made a bee line for Wasabi - who we'd brought along to make sure he and the new pup would be compatible. I had been a bit worried that she might be afraid of such a bigger dog, but it was entirely the other way around. She had no fear and lunged for his beard. He jumped straight up in the air and cowered behind Linus' legs. They adjusted quickly but the first few moments were amusing. I think all the playing tuckered her out. She slept the three hours home!
She's a kissy little thing. Her face is all wrinkly. Her nose is velvety and she has the softest, flappiest little dog lips. Bet says dogs don't have "lips" but look at her! She has dog lips. And puppy breath. And a poochy little belly while the rest of her is bony. She bunny hops towards Wasabi to play. Her ears are so big and floppy that they dip in the water when she drinks from her bowl.
Then she has to toss her head and flippity-flap them dry. Looks like I might be a doggy blogger again for the next little while as we all adjust to being a multi-dog family! Peace.